The Accused
by Sophia Hawkins
Summary: The A-Team was accustomed to having many unusual clients over the years. But what would ever drive a group of children to seek them out and hire them?
1. Chapter 1

The Accused

"B.A.! Hey B.A.!"

B.A. turned to see which kid was calling him, though he already had a pretty good idea. Yep, he was right, it was Joey coming his way.

"What's up, Joey?" he asked.

The young boy stopped a couple feet away from him and answered, "There's somebody here to see you."

Uh-oh. Either it was Hannibal and they had a new mission already or…no, Lynch wouldn't come here…or _would_ he? Hard to put anything past that fool.

"Who is it?" B.A. asked.

Joey shook his head, "Wouldn't say."

"Where?"

"Outside," Joey nodded towards the door.

"Alright, show me," B.A. told him.

Joey shrugged and led the way. They went outside and B.A. looked around but didn't see anybody.

"Where?" he asked the boy.

Joey pointed and told him, "Over by the gate."

B.A. went over to where the property was gated off and looked around, there still wasn't anybody around. He went back to Joey and asked him, "Who was it?"

"I don't know," Joey said, "Some girl."

"What?" B.A. asked.

"A girl, she asked if you were here, she was standing there when I went in to get you," Joey answered.

B.A. was left shaking his head on that one, but he didn't think much of it.

That is, not until the next day when Joey came running to get him again and said that the girl was back, but once again by the time they reached the gate, there wasn't anyone there.

B.A. turned to the boy and told him, "Joey, you know better than to pull my leg like this."

"B.A., I'm not lying," Joey said, "She was here again, and this time she had a friend with her."

"Who?" B.A. asked.

"I don't know, another girl, I'd never seen her around before," Joey told him, "I never saw _either_ of them before."

B.A. tried making some sense of this but he was coming up empty.

"How old were they?"

"I guess about as old as I am," Joey told him.

And once again, B.A. was left trying to make any kind of sense out of this, and getting nowhere fast.

"Did they say anything?" he asked.

"No," Joey shook his head.

* * *

"I don't get it, Hannibal," B.A. said that night when they met at his apartment.

Hannibal had listened to the unusual events of the last couple of days and was seated at the small kitchen table with his arms crossed and a cigar between his lips as he also tried making heads or tails of the situation.

"Have any of the kids been absent from the daycare center lately?" he inquired.

B.A. shook his head, "No, and besides Joey knows about everybody there, he says he never saw either of these kids before."

"Maybe they're new in town," Hannibal suggested, "Of course that still leaves the question how they would know you? Or at the very least, know _about_ you. Uh…" he tried to think, "Maybe their parents know you."

"If that were the case, why' they keep disappearing before I can see them?" B.A. asked.

Hannibal shrugged and answered coyly, "Maybe they're shy."

"Either way, it's weird and I don't like it, Hannibal," B.A. said.

"Oh that reminds me," Hannibal spoke up, "Face is going to go and get Murdock out of the V.A. tomorrow." He couldn't help smirking at B.A.'s threatening growl at the mention of the pilot, "Come on, B.A., we're overdue for a visit with him, don't you think?"

"No I don't," B.A. replied.

"Come on, B.A., he needs the fresh air, it'll do him some good," Hannibal said.

"A brain transplant would do him some good, he ain't got one now," B.A. told him.

Hannibal chuckled and couldn't resist teasing the Sergeant as he crooned, "Oh come on, B.A., you miss him and you know it."

"Miss that crazy fool?" B.A. replied, and snorted, "Like a broken foot maybe."

Hannibal just chuckled in response.

* * *

"Ah it's so beautiful here on the outside!" Murdock announced as he stepped out of the van, "The world has changed so much since I saw it last!"

"Murdock, you were here two weeks ago," Face reminded him.

"Oh yeah?" Murdock shrugged and said, "Time sure crawls when you're living in the psychiatric ward. Slow as molasses...except when there's a flood of it...a flood of _anything_ will go faster than the usual molasses trickle, that's just common knowledge."

Hannibal smirked as he got out on the driver's side of the van, "I'm sure B.A. won't mind that we borrowed his van to bring Murdock over…especially if we don't tell him."

Face checked his watch and said, "Speaking of which, shouldn't he be leaving by now?"

"He'll be here in a few minutes," Hannibal told him, "Just be patient, Lieutenant, you got a hot date planned or something?"

"Well actually, no, but with a little luck…" Face started to say, but didn't get a chance to finish what he had on his mind.

Murdock started jumping up and down and whooping and hollering when he saw B.A. coming out the gate.

"Hey Big Guy! Did ya miss me, huh? Huh? Huh?" Murdock asked as he ran up to the Sergeant, "Did ya? Huh? Did ya miss me? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh? Huh?"

"No," B.A. told him simply, "Now shut up you crazy fool."

"Oh it's so good to be back!" Murdock said as he sneaked a hug and then ran behind Face and Hannibal for cover.

"Alright, alright," Hannibal held his hands up in gesture as B.A. came towards them, "Let's get out of here and go home."

"_Whose_ home?" B.A. asked, "That crazy fool ain't staying with me."

"Well actually," Hannibal said as he slipped into one of the seats in the back of the van, and stopped and looked past the three of them with an unusual look on his face. They also turned to see what Hannibal had suddenly found so interesting, and found themselves staring as well.

Standing a few feet behind them were three girls who all looked somewhere between 10 and 13. The one to the left had blonde hair drawn back in a ponytail, the one to the right had dark brown hair tied back in braids, and the one in the center who seemed to be the leader of the group had reddish brown hair that was cut short like a boy's. They were all wearing jackets and jeans of varying shades of blue, and T-shirts and sneakers of every other color in the rainbow. They were all different enough that they looked like they could've been as related as the Thompson Twins, though the similar scowling faces and hard eyes that they all wore had Murdock flashing on the girls in the Culture Club video on MTV.

"Something we can do for you ladies?" Hannibal asked, clearly as confused as the others were.

The girl in the middle asked him point blank, "Are you the A-Team?"

That one knocked them all for a loop. They didn't look to each other but they all wore similar expressions of surprise.

"Why would you ask that?" Hannibal asked.

"Because we want to hire you," she said, establishing point blank eye contact with him. The other two stared on but it didn't seem that either of them was feeling too talkative right now.

"Uh-huh…and _why_ would you want to do that?" Hannibal asked her, still managing to maintain his usual nonchalant, unsurprised exterior, though at this very moment he felt a lot like they'd just crossed over into the Twilight Zone. They'd had a lot of unusual clients over the years, but never a bunch of kids. And he knew that Lynch wasn't smart enough to put them up to this.

Now it was the brunette girl who spoke up and said flat out, "Because the cops are trying to take us away from our parents and put them in jail, and they didn't do anything wrong."

Now they looked to one another to see if anybody had any idea what was going on, and it was obvious by the matching stares they were giving each other that nobody had one clue what it was about.

Hannibal looked back to the apparent leader of the pack and told her, "You have our attention."


	2. Chapter 2

En route to returning the girls to their home, the A-Team had had ample opportunity to get acquainted with everybody. The brunette girl was Viola Clover, 10 years old, the blonde girl was Daisy Hardin, 10 going on 11, and the redhead was Nancy Collins, 11 going on 12, and Daisy's half-sister. They all lived in the same apartment complex and that seemed to be right where all the trouble was, but they weren't able to get much more out of the girls at that time. And as soon as they got out of the van, Hannibal, Face and Murdock all found themselves getting shoved and pushed and hurried along by one of the girls, in the front door, up the stairs to the 4th floor apartments, and right inside apartment 4B, B.A. naturally bringing up the rear since nobody could budge him.

"Hurry up," Viola said as she pushed Face in the door of their apartment.

"Move it, move it," Daisy added as she ran behind Viola and dragged Murdock in behind her and about yanked his arm out of his socket.

"Get in, get in," Nancy said.

Hannibal wasn't having as much trouble with Nancy since he was heavier than the others and therefore harder to push, but as her hands continued to press against his back and give him a small shove forward, he did notice she seemed extremely strong for an 11-year-old girl. Then again, he didn't have much experience with girls, so he couldn't say for certain if she was just 'normal' or not.

"Is anybody here?" he asked.

"I hope not," Daisy said as she went over to the wall in the living room and reached for the lever that opened and closed the air vent. "Our parents didn't know we went out, we were supposed to stay inside until they got back."

"Hannibal, you think we ought to check the place out?" Face asked.

"Wouldn't hurt," he replied, "Make sure nobody came in while they were gone and is playing hide and seek with us."

They split up to search the place: B.A, checked the living room, Murdock looked in the kitchen, Face was shown to the girls' bedroom and went in by himself, but the others came running when they heard a ruckus followed quickly by Face screaming.

"Faceman, what happened?" Murdock asked as they went in.

They found Face laying on the floor sprawled out into something resembling a pretzel, and he didn't look amused. He picked up a 5-lb. dumbbell that was on the floor and said, "It's alright, Murdock, I just tripped on this."

Nancy pushed past Hannibal and came into the bedroom. Face held the dumbbell out to her reach and asked her, "Is this your mother's?"

"No," she answered as she took it from him, "This is mine."

"Well that explains it," Hannibal remarked, "You alright, Lieutenant?"

"Yeah, I think so," Face said as he stood up, he looked to the little redhead and told her, "You know, Nancy, that's a careless place to leave something laying around like that."

"It's not careless," she shook her head, and explained, "It's a booby trap."

"It is?"

"I had the whole room booby trapped, you just didn't set anything else off," she explained.

"Ah-huh," Face's eyes widened and he sounded a bit nervous, "Uh…_what_ else did you do?"

"Just don't touch the window, and don't open the closet, and you'll be alright," she told him.

Face shot Hannibal a confused and unamused look. Hannibal just shrugged nonchalantly and remarked, "So I guess _this_ room's clear."

One by one they left the bedroom and gathered back in the living room. One thing Hannibal noticed was that this apartment certainly seemed to have plenty of room to it, not cramped like a lot of places. Since they were all together, he decided to get to the bottom of something that had been bugging him for two days.

"Which of you came to the daycare center looking for B.A.?" Hannibal asked.

"That was Viola," Nancy said as she shut the door behind them, "If it'd been me we could've gotten to the chase on this two days ago."

"And yesterday there were two of you," Face noted.

"Daisy," Nancy pointed to her sister, "I had to stay home yesterday, _somebody_ had to stay on guard as lookout."

"For what?" Murdock asked.

"Well for one to make sure our moms didn't come home and find us gone, but also incase the cops came around while they were out," Nancy explained.

"Uh…" Hannibal looked around and asked the girls, "Where _are_ your parents?"

"Our dad's out of town on business," Daisy said.

Nancy cleared her throat and amended that statement, "Actually he's out of _state_ on business, he's got a temporary job answering phones at a call center in Baltimore."

"Oh yeah? Nice place," Murdock said with a big grin.

"Shut up fool," B.A. told him.

"Anyway," Nancy said, "He won't be back for about a month."

"Why does he work on the other side of the country?" Face inquired.

"He had a job in insurance in areas with high rates of natural disasters, so he's been all over the country," Daisy explained, "But then that work got slow when everybody stopped having storms, so he took this job at the call center. I can't imagine he likes it but it's supposed to pay well. He figures by the time he gets back he'll have enough money for us to run on until the end of the year, give him time to find a better job."

"Uh-huh…" Hannibal said a bit suspiciously, "And where's your mother?"

"Well…" Nancy started to explain.

Before she answered, he turned to Viola and asked her, "And what about your folks?"

"We live upstairs, but it's just my mother and myself," she answered, "My father _left_."

"I see," Hannibal replied, "So this actually just concerns your mothers."

"That's right," Viola told him.

"Alright, now maybe you can explain to us just _what_ the police want with you and your mothers," Hannibal said.

"Well," Nancy started to say, but was cut off when they heard the sound of two women's voices carrying down the hall.

"Sounds like they're here now," Daisy said, cringing in anticipation.

From out in the hall they could hear two distinctive women's voices, and as they came closer to the apartment the Team members were able to make out the actual words.

"_I told them to stay put until I got back, they couldn't have gotten far."_

"_Well we've got to find them, and fast!"_

Two women in their 30s, one with short tan blonde hair, dressed in a jean jacket and long blue skirt, and one with short near black hair, dressed in a white T-shirt and black overalls, burst in the door and both took a step back with surprised yelps at the sight of four strange men in their living room.

"Ah, let me guess," Hannibal said, "Mrs. Clover and Mrs. Hardin?"

"Collins," the black haired woman replied, "Who the hell are you?"

"Well," Hannibal barely got the word out.

"What're you doing here?!" she demanded to know.

Hannibal managed to remain calm as he slowly answered, "I'm trying to explain that."

"Hi Mom," the girls said with a little forced enthusiasm.

"You!" Mrs. Collins said to the girls, "Where were you?"

Nancy cleared her throat and said with a slightly nervous look on her face, "Mom," she swept her arm back to gesture to the four men and said, "This is the A-Team, we hired them."

Now the two women looked like they could both be knocked down with a feather. They looked at each other, and back to their children and asked, "What!?"

"Ladies," Hannibal said, "Allow us to introduce ourselves. I'm Hannibal Smith, that's B.A. Baracus, Templeton Peck 'the Faceman', and that is Captain H.M. Murdock."

The two mothers looked to each other again, and Mrs. Collin turned to the girls and said, "Nancy, _what_ is going on?"

"It's no joke, they're really the A-Team," Daisy said, "And we _did_ hire them." Then her eyes bugged out and she turned to her step-sister and said, "Nancy, we forgot to tell them about the money."

Nancy didn't look concerned, she crossed her arms and said, "We didn't forget, they haven't told us if they're going to take our case yet." She looked to them and told them, "I don't know how much you charge but you're welcome to all the money we've got if you'll help us."

"Well that's a nice offer but," Face started to reply, then something occurred to him, "Exactly how much…"

Murdock elbowed him sharply in his side before he could finish his question.

"I think we've got about $130 between us all," Viola said, picking at her nails nervously.

"Well before we take the case," Hannibal addressed the mothers now, "I'd like to find out _why_ we were solicited for a job, _especially_ by a group of children."

Mrs. Collins ignored him and moved to her daughter and asked her, "Nancy, where did you find these men?"

"Well we found out from some of the other kids that one of them," she pointed to B.A., "Works at that daycare center downtown, apparently all the kids in the city know him, so Viola went to check it out. He matched the description they gave, so she came back and told us. Then she and Daisy went back the next day to make sure he was still there, and he was. So today we went down and happened to run into all four of them just as they were leaving."

Mrs. Clover looked from one of the men to the next, to the other and she said, "You're serious about this? You're really the A-Team?"

"In the flesh," Murdock answered boastfully.

Mrs. Clover looked to Mrs. Collins and said, "What do you know, Lorraine? They _are_ real." She turned back to them and said, looking a bit embarrassed by her admission, "We thought you were just a myth."

"We'd prefer it if the military could think of us that way," Hannibal said with a small smile, "But we tend to prefer it if our clients know we're real, it's better for business that way."

"By the way," Face said to Viola's mother, "I don't think we caught your name."

"I'm Jolene Clover," she answered.

The woman called Lorraine looked like a migraine just struck her, she grabbed a handful of her bangs and lowered her head and her chest started heaving up and down as she started breathing heavily.

"Uh…" Face turned to the girls and asked them, "Why don't you show us the rest of those booby traps so we don't accidentally set any of them off?"

"That won't be necessary," Daisy said, "Anything you've got to say to Mom we can stick around for, we always have."

"Well let's talk about the money situation," Face told them.

"Alright, it's in our room," Nancy nodded her head in that direction.

Face and Murdock went with the girls into the bedroom while Hannibal went over to Lorraine and helped ease her down onto the couch, her breathing was so erratic she looked like she'd either start hyperventilating or throw up.

"Are you alright, Miss?" he asked.

She looked down to the carpeted floor and shook her head, "My husband's on the other side of the country with limited communication, this neighborhood has practically become Nazi Germany, the cops and the children's service workers are breathing down my neck trying to bust in here and put me in jail and take my children away from me, and I come home to find out my girls are _gone_ when I told them to stay in the apartment until I returned, and come back to find 4 strange men standing in my living room. No! I'm _not_ alright." She looked at him, and then at B.A. and asked skeptically, "You men…you're really going to help us?"

"We'd like to," Hannibal told her as he sat down beside her, "We're certainly going to try."

Jolene looked at them and said, "They didn't tell you _why_ any of this was happening, did they?"

Hannibal turned his neck to see her and replied, "No, they were starting to when you came rushing back."

Lorraine's small hopeful smile dropped and she said, "You're not going to help us…once you find out why, you won't be any different than the rest."

Hannibal glanced to B.A. and the two exchanged equally confused looks, he turned back to Lorraine and asked her, "You want to try explaining your situation to me before you start condemning us?"

"You'll have to excuse her, the last few weeks have left everybody high on edge," Jolene said as she sat down on the arm of the couch, "But after all the wringers we've been put through, it's getting plenty hard to find anybody to trust."

"Well we're not exactly unsympathetic, we _do_ know a little about having trust issues with people, particularly those in uniform," Hannibal said, "But what's this all about?"

"It's a very long story," Lorraine told him.

Hannibal shrugged and said simply, "We're listening."


	3. Chapter 3

When Viola said that they had $130 between them to pay the A-Team, Face had been mildly surprised, and now he was more than mildly annoyed that the majority of it seemed to be in loose change they'd saved up in a tin bank. Fortunately however, the three girls had immediately started counting and sorting it up, and at this rate they'd probably have the sum total in just a few minutes. He and Murdock got on the floor with them and helped them count everything, but Daisy had gone over to her drawer and pulled out a wad of coin wrappers and rolled them up as they were counted.

"If you don't mind my asking," Face said, "Where'd you get all this money from?"

"We saved it," Daisy answered lightly.

"Ah," Face sarcastically remarked.

Viola looked up at him and asked, "_Are_ you going to take our case?"

"Oh I'd say it's a safe bet," Face said, "Probably a safer bet once we actually find out _what_ it's all about."

The girls exchanged mutual grim looks and Nancy said only, "You'll find out soon enough."

"Hmm," Face turned to Murdock and said, "I wonder if this is what it feels like to be in the company of the people with the price on your head? Everybody knows what's going on but you."

Murdock just shrugged his shoulders and looked around the room; it was shared by Daisy and Nancy, also for the time being with Viola, which made things a little crowded. There were two beds in the middle of the room, off to one wall there was a table and a couple of chairs, off to another wall was a big dresser with a boombox on it and several cassettes of the latest rock stars. And off to the other wall was a small bookcase filled with old, second hand and probably third and fourth hand books for young readers: mysteries, adventure stories, etc., but also there were a few more 'adult' volumes lining the shelves: stories by Edgar Allen Poe, mysteries collected by Alfred Hitchcock in his anthology books and monthly magazines, also a couple of old Tarzan books and a few superhero and detective comics. In a pile on the floor by the closet were boxes of well used board games. A small trunk rested in front of one of the beds, it looked like it was locked, but he wasn't about to go invading anybody's privacy in this apartment.

On one hand, this sure didn't look like the typical American girl's bedroom. The walls were painted a faded light blue, most likely painted several years ago because in some spots it was very faded. To compensate for the fact that the paint had seen better days, they'd been decorated over with large posters for 'First Blood', 'Battle Beyond the Stars' and also 'House on Haunted Hill' and 'The French Connection', though Murdock noted, no posters of rock stars, a bit odd. Also there were a few pictures of the 3 Stooges in various poses and positions of hilarity stuck on the walls. There were other pictures taped to the walls that looked like they'd been cut, or ripped out of magazines or books: Joan of Arc, Amelia Earhart, Alice in Wonderland, illustrations from the Wizard of Oz books, the 4077 unit from "M*A*S*H", and a few drawn pictures made of Dick Tracy, the Shadow, and Batman and Robin, all drawn quite well he thought.

"I like the décor of this room," he said as he tilted his head back so far he wound up falling on his back, and added completely unfazed by the fall, "I wish they'd let me do my room like this."

"Where do you live?" Daisy asked.

"Don't ask," Face told her.

"Why won't they?" Viola asked.

"Oh I guess they're worried I'd eat the tape or something," Murdock answered as he pushed himself back up, "Of course…if I ever Velcroed myself to the ceiling again I guess the pictures would all get scuff marks from my shoes when I start climbing the walls."

Daisy and Nancy looked at each other and exchanged a mutual look that suggested they were afraid to ask, and maybe they were better off not knowing.

When they finished rolling up the money, Face looked over the rolls and said for the girls' benefit because he was sure they hadn't really been paying attention to how much money they'd rolled up, "Alright, let's see, each roll of quarters is ten dollars, each roll of dimes is five, the nickel rolls are two dollars and the penny rolls are fifty cents, so that means we've got…"

"One hundred and fifty-five dollars with the cash we have," Viola told him, "That's better than we thought."

Face was left dumbstruck for a few seconds before finally responding, "Yeah…" he looked to her and said, "You're fast."

"Yeah and she knows how to count too," Nancy said cynically, "Will it be enough?"

"I'm sure it will, but for what?" Face asked.

* * *

Lorraine sat down at a table partitioned between the kitchen and the living room that was weighted down with an assortment of school text books, pencils, compasses, and a plastic globe, and she ran the palm of her hand over the cover of a history book and told Hannibal and B.A., "My daughters are smart girls…their whole lives I've done everything I could to make sure that they had the best…best opportunities, best upbringing, best home environment, and damn it I know it wasn't perfect, but whose is? It still wasn't any reason for _this_ to happen." She lowered her gaze and shook her head helplessly.

Jolene stood by and shifted her weight from one foot to the other anxiously. She knew Lorraine wasn't able to make much sense right now and she tried explaining it to the men, "This building is pretty empty anymore…a while back about every apartment had tenants in it…parents, their children…we were like a small community, everybody knew everybody else, we all got along…and then…" she sighed and shook her head, "One by one everybody just disappeared."

That definitely got their attention. The Colonel and the Sergeant looked at each other quizzically and then back at the women.

"What do you mean _disappeared_?" Hannibal asked.

It was at this time that Murdock and Face were coming out of the bedroom and also got in on the conversation, but Murdock pulled the door shut behind them so the girls didn't get into the middle of anything, because he had a good idea that things were just about to get plenty ugly.

"A few weeks ago, the police came to the building and went to see the woman who lived in the apartment across from me," Jolene explained, "They kicked in the door, a couple minutes later they dragged her out in handcuffs, wrestled her down to the car, put her in jail. And as we all waited to hear what had happened, I remembered that a couple days earlier, there was a woman that came to see her. She pounded on the door and said she had to get inside and talk to the woman's children, but she wouldn't say why."

"You heard that?" Hannibal asked.

"The two of them were making enough noise to wake the dead," Jolene answered, "The whole floor heard it, most of us listened but few of us actually opened the door, because we didn't want anybody talking to us. And then a couple days later after she was taken away, the cops come back again, and they go to see a family who lived on the floor above us…we could hear them screaming, I thought the whole ceiling was going to come crashing down. They took that woman away too…and I talked to some of the neighbors, they said the same woman had been to see her a few days earlier, and for the same reason. She just _had_ to get in and speak to the woman's children, but she couldn't say why."

Lorraine started to pull herself together and she further explained to the A-Team, "Some of the families packed up what they could and moved out in the middle of the night, before the cops could come for them…a few left us forwarding addresses, numbers…told us to burn them if anybody came to talk to us, so nobody can find them. Other families decided to stay…but the cops came and took them too…" she laughed bitterly and told Hannibal, "the Gestapo, _that's_ what those pigs are…breaking down doors, dragging people out, putting them in jail, for no reason!"

"There has to be _some_ reason," Face said, "The police don't just do that for nothing."

Lorraine turned to him with a scowl that would've put him in the ground and she told him, "_You_ show a stunning lack of imagination if you really believe that, Mr. Peck." She turned to Hannibal and told him, "Mr. Smith," she pounded her fist on the table and said, "These are my children's schoolbooks, this is where they go everyday."

"I see that," Hannibal said calmly, not really getting what the connection was.

Lorraine shook her head, "No you don't, _this_ is where my children go to school, and _that_ is why the cops came for those other families and _that's_ why they're coming for us now."

Hannibal did something akin to a double take, he looked at the women with a very confused look on his face, and it matched the others' just about perfectly.

"I don't understand," Face said.

"Of course you don't," Jolene rolled her eyes, "Nobody does."

"It's called homeschooling, Mr. Peck," Lorraine told him sharply, "Something that I'm guessing you're not very familiar with."

What the A-Team didn't know was that the girls were listening to every word from the other side of the bedroom door.

"Here we go," Nancy groaned as she smacked herself on the forehead.

* * *

Hannibal scratched the side of his head and told the mothers, "Now _I_ don't understand, what's that got to do with this?"

"Everything," Lorraine answered, "That woman was from the children's services. Her coming around is like a warning the Grim Reaper is on his way. A couple days after she tries paying certain families a visit, since nobody was willing to let her in and see their children, the cops come and arrest them."

"And all of the families in this building homeschool their kids?" Hannibal asked curiously.

"Most of them do, or _did_," Jolene told him, "Purely coincidence but once we all got to know one another, we all got along fine…our kids all knew each other, we didn't think anything could go wrong."

"Of course we knew when we started this that it wasn't very popular, which hadn't ever stopped us before," Lorraine added, "Everybody knows the stigma that's attached, all those smug people, 'Oh, you're homeschooling your child, well they must be retarded, right? Because nobody would do it otherwise, there must be something _wrong_ with your child since you're homeschooling them, _normal_ parents in _normal_ families _don't_ do that.' We've heard it all before, and if somebody wants to talk trash about _me_, that's fine, but _nobody_ drags my kids into the mud slinging campaign and gets away with it."

"Well they hardly seem 'retarded' to me," Hannibal noted, "In fact your children seem about as normal as they come, interpretative though that term is, 'normal'."

"Jolene and I've known each other about 7 years," Lorraine told him, "She saw me through the end of one marriage and the course of a second one, and I saw her through her worthless husband walking out on her and taking everything short of the kitchen sink. I fixed him on the way out though, _also_ an unpopular decision, but nothing I regret."

Jolene smiled nervously and explained, "After a few of the other families had been taken away, I brought Viola down here and we've been staying with Lorraine."

"That's right," Lorraine laughed just as nervously, "Everybody's afraid of me…up till now anyway. Looks like I finally met my match."

"What's that woman from child services want with everybody in this building?" Hannibal asked.

"Hell if I know," Lorraine said, "All anybody ever heard out of that crazy broad was that she had to get inside the apartments and talk to the children, she couldn't _possibly_ tell the parents _why_ she had to speak to their kids _alone_. That would just make too much sense, wouldn't it?"

"So what did the cops arrest them for?" Face asked, "Failure to comply?"

"Oh no, officially, they managed to get everybody slapped with child abuse and child endangerment, and abandonment," Lorraine explained.

"Abandonment?" Murdock asked.

Jolene looked to him and explained, "The cops left the kids behind in the apartment when they arrested their parents, that way they could say they abandoned their kids and get that added on."

"Oh yeah?" Murdock seemed to sprout up 6 more inches and puffed his chest out and adjusted his cap, "Just point me in the general direction they went and I'm gonna sweep the streets with those suckers."

"Careful, Murdock," Face said lightly, "You're starting to sound like B.A."

"And what's wrong with that?" B.A. growled.

"Nothing," Face answered as he took a step away from the Sergeant.

"Hannibal," B.A. said, "For once the crazy fool's right, I say we find these suckers and bust they' heads open."

"So noted," Hannibal replied calmly, "But let's not get ahead of ourselves."

"Oh please, Colonel, just this once?" Murdock asked anxiously, "I always wanted to try that, see how far it'll take me to catch up with myself."

Hannibal looked to the women and asked them, "You really think that the only reason this is happening is because you homeschool your children?"

"What else _could_ it be?" Lorraine asked, "Aside from that, the tenants of this building really _don't_ have a lot in common, and I happen to know nobody who's been arrested _ever_ abused their kids or endangered them, so why else would everybody say they did?"

"Why indeed?" Face agreed, "Uh…Mrs. Collins? If you don't mind my asking, I'm not sure I get this concept…ah…"

"I'm not surprised," she replied shortly, "Most people _don't_."

"Ah-huh," Face took a step away from her now as he sensed she wasn't too far from beating his head in with the first thing she grabbed, "Well, maybe you could just run the general basics by me so I understand it better."

"It means, Lieutenant," Hannibal told him, "That their children are enrolled in a school, they just don't _attend_ the school, instead they do their work here, and then the tests and essays are sent _to_ the school through mail correspondence, uh," he turned to the women and asked, "Am I right so far?"

"For the most part," Jolene answered.

"I had a feeling," he replied with a small satisfied smirk.

Lorraine eyed him suspiciously and asked him, "How did you know that?"

"Uh…my mother considered it a time or two when I was a kid," Hannibal answered, "Their roots were put down in Hollywood but they liked traveling and that meant keeping options open, including when I could take off from school. _Generally_ the teachers didn't care back then so long as you sent a note when you came back from vacation, but I had a few hard cases."

"They had it back then?" Face asked.

Hannibal slowly turned around and half scowled at his Lieutenant.

"The school our girls are enrolled in was founded back in the late 1800s," Jolene explained.

"See, Face? It's possible they had them when Hannibal was a kid," Murdock said.

"Ha-ha, Captain," Hannibal dryly remarked, "Anyway, a few pieces of the process have changed with time but it's still the same basic idea…instead of sending the kids to school to learn, the school comes to them and the parents teach them."

"Who knows their kids better, who knows how they learn better?" Lorraine replied, "Who has the _time_ to notice _how_ they learn, where they excel and where they need help?"

"Touché," Hannibal said.

"Well, I'm not familiar with it," Face said, "But," he turned to Hannibal and added, "I sure don't recall ever hearing that it was outlawed in this state."

"It's not," Lorraine answered, "Not _yet_ anyway…some lawmakers have gotten the idea that it ought to be, you can be sure they'll try. All over the country they're going to try sooner or later, we heard in the news recently about two families who were arrested for it in Rhode Island, even though it's not a law on the books over there either. But they've really been going to work on the idea that it's a crime _here_ in this neighborhood."

"Now _why_ would they do that?" Murdock asked.

"Oh there's a reason," Jolene said, "There's _always_ a reason. People don't go around doing this kind of stuff for the hell of it you know."

"Not exactly a new idea," Hannibal said, and looking to his men he told them, "You all would've been too young to know what was going on at the time."

"Care to fill us in, Hannibal?" Face asked.

"Well back during the Red Scare in the 50s, it was believed that communists were going to infiltrate the schools and brainwash the children to follow communism by just lightly tweaking the academic curriculum here and there to fit their own agenda, sort of a 'destroy from within without firing a single shot', or as Stalin put it, 'America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within', and back then those three things were taught _heavily_ in public schools, clearly far more than they are today. So a lot of parents would be waiting as soon as their kids got home and quiz them on what they were taught that day. And if they thought that there was something hokey to it, they took it upon themselves to correct what their kids learned. Anybody looking hard enough could even have that declared a method of homeschooling, _and_ if my memory serves, it was also around that time that everybody got very big on 'must get the children away from the harmful home environment, it's a negative influence to the kids, the parents are wrong and the teachers know best'. Everybody liked to assume the parents were too stupid to be trusted to teach their kids _anything_ and get it right simply because they weren't trained professionals. So what's going on now could very well just be the latest step in a very old battle that goes back quite a ways," Hannibal explained.

"But why now? Why us?" Jolene wanted to know.

Hannibal shrugged and suggested, "Bad luck of the draw perhaps?"

"If they were going to come after anybody because they thought the parents were being a bad influence on their kids," Lorraine said, "They would've come here first, everybody knows where I stand."

"Uh huh," Hannibal replied, "And where exactly is that?"

Lorraine got up from the table and told him, "In the beginning, we put our kids in public school, but very quickly we found out it wasn't working, and everybody who's ever worked at the local schools got one _hell_ of an earful from me."

"Would you mind filling us in?" he asked her.

Lorraine opened her mouth to talk, but before she could get a sound out, they all heard the sound of somebody walking around upstairs on the floor above them. The women looked to the ceiling and listened to the passing footsteps and both looked pale as sheets.

"What's that?" B.A. asked.

"I'm not sure," Lorraine said with a small shake of her head.

They all went to the door and looked out, and up, in time to see somebody step back and away from the top stairs leading up to the next floor, stepping back into the shadows.


	4. Chapter 4

"Who's up there?" B.A. called up.

Slowly, they heard somebody step onto the top step, and slowly move down to the next one. They all stood at the door and watched and after a few seconds were able to make out the outline of the person coming down the stairs. A few more steps down and they saw that it was a teenaged girl dressed in a jean jacket, black pants, teal sneakers, and a ball cap, completely covering her hair.

"Who's this?" Hannibal asked.

"This is Chloe," Lorraine answered, "Her family used to live upstairs until the cops came. She's been hiding out in Jolene's apartment since she and her daughter came down to stay with us. Once the police saw the apartment was empty, they left and gave up on that one, so it seemed safe enough for Chloe to stay in until further notice." Under her breath she told Hannibal, "She was out when their apartment was raided, her mother and her twin brother were taken away…she hasn't spoken a word since it happened."

"How old is she?" Hannibal asked, his eyeballs never moving from the direct view of the girl.

"About 14," Lorraine told him, and again she murmured to Hannibal, "That's her brother's jacket and cap, she also hasn't taken them off since the cops took them away."

Hannibal looked at the girl and felt her eyes boring holes into him in return. Her gaze would be enough to put _anybody_ in the ground if looks could kill, he could just imagine the horrors that she'd been through.

"Chloe," Jolene reached over and put her hand on the girl's wrist, "It's alright, these men are here to help."

She looked like she wasn't sure whether to believe that or not. Hannibal made all the introductions for the Team again for her benefit, but it didn't break any ice with Chloe. So then Hannibal suggested they get back into the Collins' apartment where they could talk better in private.

"I'm still not sure that I get what's going on here since if what you're doing _isn't_ illegal, then _why_ is everybody getting arrested for it?" he asked as they closed the door behind them.

"Well that's why officially they just arrest them for abuse," Jolene said, "That way they don't have to explain that part until it gets handed over to the courts, and apparently the judges overseeing the cases are firm believers in outlawing it."

"Well I'm still not convinced that that's what's going on, _whatever_ is going on here has to be a front for something else," Hannibal said, "That's the only thing that makes sense."

"_Nothing_ that's gone on here makes any sense," Lorraine told him, "My husband goes away on business a month ago, and everything is fine here…and right after he leaves, _then_ all hell breaks loose."

"What do you mean?" Hannibal asked.

"Several of the women in this building who have kids are divorced," Lorraine explained, "And the others…somebody has to work and that's usually the husbands while the mothers stay at home with the kids. Every time that woman from children's services or the cops came around, was _always_ when the husbands were at work and couldn't do anything about the arrest, they're not as inclined to bust into an apartment where the men are home, not _yet_ anyway."

"Ah, and that makes you two a perfect target," Hannibal realized.

"Our number came up," Jolene said, "That woman came to my apartment a few days ago and _then_ she came here to Lorraine's door a couple days ago."

"And once again this woman makes a big deal about she must get into my apartment and see my children _alone_ and speak to them privately," Lorraine said, "And finally I asked her what probable cause she had for speaking with them…and what do you suppose she said? 'Huh?', that was it. This woman works for the people who decide which children stay with their parents and which ones get taken out of their homes and put in the foster care system, and she doesn't even know what probable cause is, if _that's_ not scary, then I don't know what is."

"I see, and _that's_ when your girls got the idea to find us and hire us," Hannibal said.

"Yeah," Lorraine said, "At the same time I was out trying to find a lawyer that I can afford to defend us when those pigs come busting in." She shook her head, "Can't find anybody who'll work less than $150 an hour, we can't afford that."

The bedroom door opened and Nancy said as the girls came out, "The only people who can afford lawyers are the people who don't deserve them." The adults turned to her and she said flat out, "Big as our society is on everybody having the right to counsel, the way I see it is if you're guilty you shouldn't deserve a lawyer to say you're innocent or it's not your fault, kind of defeats the purpose of justice, doesn't it? Especially if a lawyer's not going to bother finding out if his client actually did it or not, but law school doesn't teach you anything about honesty, does it? Only to win the case, at any and all costs."

"Smart kid," Hannibal noted to Lorraine.

"Oh we try," Nancy replied cynically, "So now that you know our dirty little secret, are you going to take the case?"

Even if Hannibal _had_ needed to consider it, one look to his Sergeant and Captain would've answered for him. "Yes, we will. We'll stick around and make sure if anybody comes poking around here again, they don't get you or your kids."

"Well what do you know? I'm relieved," Viola commented flatly.

"How long were you listening?" Face asked.

"Since you started yapping," Daisy answered, "We tried to tell you…"

Nancy explained for her sister, "See we're very progressed, we don't believe in sending kids out of the room to discuss certain things, we prefer getting it all right out in the open so everybody can hear it out and put in their opinions on the matter."

Hannibal chuckled at her comment and said, "_Very_ smart kids…and cute too."

Nancy scowled at him.

"If we're going to take this job, we're going to be here for a while," Hannibal told Lorraine, "Are you well stocked up on food?"

"Uh…" Lorraine shrugged, as flustered as she was at this moment about the whole thing, she couldn't tell him anything with certainty.

"Face, go check the fridge," Hannibal said.

"Right."

"You," Hannibal told Chloe, and pointed to the couch, "Sit down."

With a scowl on her face and without a single sound, she slowly complied. She walked over to the couch, but once there she planted her feet, crossed her arms to her chest and glared at him. Hannibal gave her a small shove and she fell back against the couch cushions without a sound. Hannibal turned to Murdock and told him, "Find a bell to put around her neck or something, she's too quiet."

"Well, Hannibal," Face came back from the kitchen, "For three people there's enough food for a few days but for…" he started doing a head count, "Four, seven…nine…_ten_ people…we're going to need some supplies."

"Alright," Hannibal turned to Murdock and said, "Captain, you're in charge of getting groceries, and since these young women are footing the bill on the job, take them with you and let them decide what to get."

Murdock nodded, "Sure thing, Colonel."

Chloe jumped up from the couch and the four girls jumped to a stiff and straight 'at attention' stance. Murdock took the lead and barked, "About face, forward-march!" and led them out the door.

Hannibal closed the door behind them and said to Lorraine, "I had him take them out of here because I want to talk to you about what's going on, and I can tell that whatever you're going to say is something they don't need to relive anymore than they already have. They're nice kids and don't deserve to go through anymore hell than can be helped, no matter how _progressive_ this family considers itself to be. Now you said earlier that if the police were going to come after anybody first, it would be _you_ for the ruckus you raised with the school, would you care to give us the details on that now?"

Lorraine looked like she'd rather do anything but. But she stood her ground and she told Hannibal, "It's a long, sordid history…Nancy's not my first daughter, I have another…she's grown up and gone now…she went to public school, _I_ went to public school, and nobody liked me, and Mr. Smith when I say _nobody_, I'm not merely talking about the other students. The teachers didn't like me. My first grade teacher was a mean old woman who hated kids and she knocked me down a set of concrete stairs because I didn't act like all the other kids in her class. She wanted everybody to be alike, act alike, all do their projects _alike_, if you were any different, you paid dearly for it, and I was the _only_ child she had who wasn't interested in being just like everybody else. And it didn't get better as I got older. In high school my teachers always told me to _give_ my answers to the star quarterback so he could pass his tests so he could stay on the team, because they knew that I was smart and I would pass so I must have the right answers. Cheating is prohibited when it's anybody else but when it's an athlete then that is not only acceptable, it is required. _Now_, I thought it was just me…I thought my children would have it better than I did, different teachers, a different generation…" she shook her head.

"It got _worse_?" Face asked.

"Oh _yes_," Lorraine nodded, "My oldest girl, Charlotte…" she groaned as she recalled, "About the time she was 12 I got a call from her teacher, her _male_ teacher, informing _me_ that it was not _my_ place to decide when she needed to wear a bra, that that was going to be _his_ decision to make."

Hannibal let out a low whistle and said, "Now _that's_ asking for it."

"Believe me if I could've ripped his teeth out of his mouth and handed them to him, I would've," Lorraine told him, "And don't think I didn't take it up with his superiors…" she rolled her eyes, "Everybody had the same story, he's a teacher and therefore he's a good person and therefore he would _never_ do anything wrong, therefore I was making too much out of something and they advised me not to make anymore trouble for that 'nice man'."

"Oh you gotta be kidding me," Face said with a grimace and a groan.

Lorraine was as deadpan as they came as she told him, "If I were kidding you'd know it. It's just like anywhere else in the world, like hospitals that know their nurses are killing babies but instead of doing anything to stop them, just send them on to another hospital to do it again. Just like churches and religious schools where they know the priests and the nuns are abusing the children, they send them to other churches to work with more kids thinking they'll stop doing it, just like any other crooked position of authority in this world, all they do is cover each other's butts more times than a diaper company."

Hannibal managed a small chuckle and said, "I'm just guessing you got through your younger years with that charming personality of yours."

"And sore knuckles," Lorraine answered as she held up her fist, "I got in touch with some of the other mothers and asked them if they'd had similar conversations with the teacher. You know how it is when you can't help feeling bad for the others in the same trap but you've just got to get your own self out first? Well, I couldn't get anything done with that pervert so I yanked Charlotte out and transferred her to another school…she wound up transferring 8 different times before she graduated."

Hannibal couldn't resist asking her, "Was an all girls' school out of the question, or do those have men on the staff as well?"

"No, it wasn't that," Lorraine said, "One teacher complained she was too fast compared to the other students, another complained that she wasn't sociable enough, they also complained that she asked too many questions."

"Say what?!" B.A. asked, "What do they think they're doing there then? That's what school's for."

Lorraine ignored his question other than to roll her eyes and shake her head. She told Hannibal, "It got so bad she wanted to drop out, I wouldn't let her, until she graduated every day of that last semester was practically a death match to get her to go, and I can't say I blame her but she needed to get her diploma."

"No argument there," Hannibal replied, "How long ago was this?"

"I had her young," Lorraine said, "Nancy was a baby by the time she graduated and moved out. I know I made a lot of mistakes with Charlotte and I regret that every day, but what's done is done and all I could do was vow to do better by my next child, and I've sure as hell tried."

"You mentioned that you started her out in public school as well?" Hannibal asked curiously.

"_Oh yeah_," Lorraine answered in a tone that was almost humorous despite the seriousness of the conversation, "This wasn't my first idea, though looking back now I wish it was, could've saved _all_ of us a lot of trouble."

"Why, what happened there?" Face asked.

"Oh a lot of it was the same…see I taught Nancy how to read when she was…I guess about preschool age…so when I get her ready for kindergarten I find out not only is she already so far ahead most of the other kids, but because her birthday comes after August, she'd have to wait until the next year when she was 6 going on 7 to just start kindergarten."

"That's always been one of the more idiotic rules in the American school system," Face commented.

"Anyway," Lorraine continued, "I said to hell with that, and just pushed ahead to get her enrolled in first grade. Of course everybody had a big fit about that too,_ what_ did I think I was doing enrolling a 5-year-old in first grade? She already knew a lot of the material, she _was_ able to keep up. But _then_ the teachers started complaining again, she read too fast for the others to keep up, she got her work finished first while everybody else was still doing theirs."

"I thought that's what teachers _wanted_ in students," Hannibal said.

Lorraine snorted and replied, "Shows what you get for thinking, don't it? And _then_…I got divorced, and Nancy had to pay the price for that one too. It was one thing when the kids were harassing her for it, that's the way of the world, children are cruel, that's a given because either they have to be trained to know better or they _were_ trained to be that way. But then the _teachers_ started harassing her for having divorced parents as well."

"What!?" B.A. asked in disbelief.

"The school she was enrolled in at the time wasn't exactly what you'd consider a religious or even a very _moral_ school, but all the teachers made us a big joke, like how stupid was _I_ that I couldn't keep a husband? If half of those people would get out of Egypt and stop being a bunch of Queens of Denial, _they'd_ all wake up and get divorced as well, they're already miserable and running around on each other and everybody knows it, but because they wear a public veneer so well and are in all the public high society clubs and organizations and are members of every single thing in the upper class parts of this city and have money, nobody's going to acknowledge it so they look so much more mightier than I or anybody else who divorces their piece of dirt spouse," Lorraine explained, "And what could I do? You better believe I gave Nancy full permission to beat the daylights out of every single kid who gave her trouble for it. But then when the teachers also got in on the action, I had to yank her out."

"And when you remarried?" Hannibal asked.

Lorraine let out an exasperated huff, "Daisy was always getting into trouble because she asked too many questions or she wouldn't sit still during class, she also had trouble in math and grammar classes, but the teachers said it wasn't their job to show her what to do and besides they already had their hands full with too many children already, and barely enough desks, hardly enough supplies and nowhere near enough time to deal with them all. They were perfectly willing to let her slip through the cracks just because they had their hands full with other kids that they also ignored when they needed help. Exactly what the hell was I _supposed_ to do? Everywhere you look the schools are getting overcrowded."

"What about private schools?" Face asked.

She glared at him and asked, "You know anybody who can _afford_ those? I don't. We can barely afford _this_."

Face gave her a very perplexed look and asked, "How much does it _cost_ to homeschool your kids?"

"Roughly $900 _per_ kid _per_ grade year," Lorraine answered, "So that in itself would come to $1800 for these two for one year, except in 1 year's time they can probably get through close to 2 years' work so that immediately comes to $3,600 in one year."

"And that's why your husband's off working in Baltimore right now," Hannibal deducted.

"Yes, we need the money if we're going to be able to afford the next semester for these girls," Lorraine told him, "They'll get the summer off, _I_ can go out and get a job as well by then, so in the fall we ought to be pretty well off for it…assuming we make it that long without the cops busting in here."

"They won't," Hannibal told her.

"How can you be sure of that?" she asked.

"It's our specialty," he answered.

"What about you, Jolene?" Face asked, "How'd you decide to do this?"

"I know…knew…I _knew_ Chloe's mother, she was the first we knew to start homeschooling, she told us about it."

"Alright, why did _she_ start?" Face wanted to know.

Jolene looked at him with an exhausted expression but told him, "Chloe and her brother, Derrick…"

"Eh?" Face asked.

Jolene mockingly returned his confused stare and remarked, "Don't you think twins ever want to be as much individual as they can instead of being clones of one another? Dressing them alike is bad enough, but naming them to be almost identical is about the worst thing a parent can do. Anyway…when they started kindergarten they kept to themselves for the first week and didn't make much effort to make friends with the other kids. And after that first week the teacher decided to separate them and put them into different groups to _force_ them to interact with the other kids. It didn't work, they just kept to themselves. So then it was decided, based on how they acted the first week in a strange, new environment surrounded by strange people they had never seen before, that they were both mentally retarded and therefore must be assigned to the retarded groups of kids, where they would be stuck for their entire elementary school years. This being despite the fact that they were _not_ retarded and were in fact very intelligent for their ages."

"Hmmm," Hannibal turned to Lorraine, "Nazi Germany indeed it seems."

"Unfortunately they went through the same thing with Viola…these teachers think that all children must come into kindergarten _happy_ to be away from their families and their homes and everything they've known their whole lives, to spend all day in a strange place surrounded by strangers, who they've been trained their whole lives not to talk to and not to go with, and that they must make friends with all the other kids, and if they don't, then they're weird and there's something the matter with them and they need to be bunched in with the slow kids or the ones who are damaged because their mothers exposed them to harmful substances before they were born. And you tell me how that's supposed to be fair to the children in question? Especially the ones who are _not_ slow _or_ damaged, but are perfectly normal and intelligent, and that their only fault is that they are shy and take their time adapting to their new surroundings?" Jolene asked.

Hannibal turned to Face and asked him, "Well Lieutenant, is the picture starting to get a little clearer for you?"

"Yeah I guess you could say that," Face replied, his face feeling a bit warm as it presumably turned red.

"And what about now?" Hannibal asked the women, "Since you made this switch, how are your kids fairing now?"

"Well until _this_ trouble started, they loved it," Jolene answered, "No more stupid teachers, no groups to decide where everybody belongs based on how fast or slow or smart or stupid they are. They do the same kind of work that the public school kids cover from 8 to 3, there's no homework, so when their friends get home they can play with them just like the 'normal' kids do…they're not penalized for not being _just_ like everybody else or for being too curious, it's not perfect, that's for damn sure, but it's a hell of an improvement over how things were before."

"And now," Hannibal said, "Somebody wants to take that away from all the families in this building who are doing it, the question is why? And is it just _here_? Or are there other people throughout the city who have gone through the same thing?"

"I don't know," Lorraine told him hopelessly, "I just don't know."

"Well…" Hannibal said in his 'don't worry' tone, "We'll find out."

* * *

Murdock whistled to himself as he reached up to the top shelf he was passing and grabbed down a box of cereal and put it in the cart. So far this had been one enlightening trip to the grocery store. He'd managed to get the other three girls to open up and be more verbal about a few things, but he still hadn't been able to crack so much as a smile out of Chloe, let alone any words. They'd been at the supermarket for 20 minutes, and had already accumulated enough food to feed the 5th Marine division, so hopefully there was also enough for the 10 of them to get by on for the next few days. The pilot knew perfectly well the groceries in themselves were going to exceed the total fee they were paid by the girls, but that was irrelevant, they didn't need to know that. He turned and started to say, "How is it that…" and stopped when he realized only Chloe was following him. He stopped the cart and asked her, "Where're the others?"

To which Chloe merely pointed back the way they'd come.

Murdock huffed and turned on his heel, but then stopped, and asked Chloe, "If I bring you with me to look for them, are _you_ going to take off the minute my back's turned?"

Chloe just shrugged in response.

"Stay here," Murdock told her, figuring it was an idea just crazy enough to work. And he went back the way he'd come to track down the other girls.

The grocery store wasn't particularly crowded but he had to trace his way back through two more aisles before he found Nancy and Viola in the potato chip aisle. He didn't say anything as he closed the gap between them, so as he got closer he could hear what they were saying to each other, as they seemed to be discussing a bag of cheese puffs.

"There's no cheese in this," Viola said.

"Mm-mm," Nancy replied negatively while mimicking drinking something.

Viola felt the contents through the bag and replied, "Corn meal, salt, and yellow and red food dye."

"That's what we call cheese back home on Earth," Nancy responded like a smart aleck.

Murdock smiled in spite of himself. Insofar as he could tell there wasn't anything wrong with these kids, and certainly _nothing_ to suggest abuse or neglect. Why anybody would want to take them away from their parents was beyond him.

Viola looked past Nancy and saw Murdock coming at them and she commented to Nancy, "Look what the wind blew in."

Nancy turned and looked to him. One thing about it, this was the first time since they'd met the girls that any of them really seemed to be having any fun. If what they said was true, and Murdock had no reason to believe it wasn't, he could only imagine what life had been like for them in the past few weeks.

"Where's your sister?" he asked Nancy.

"Checking out the magazines, she'll be here in a minute," she answered.

Now that he'd found them, he decided to try again and ask what he'd started to earlier. "Are there any boys living in the building with you guys?" he asked.

Nancy's overall facial expression curled under into a sour one as she answered, "There _were_."

"Oh," Murdock responded as the realization hit him, "They all got taken away too?"

"The ones whose parents didn't move out in the middle of the night did," Nancy explained, "It's practically just us left now."

"I see," he said.

For some reason, Murdock flashed on in Peter Pan when it was explained girls were too smart to roll out of their cribs when the nurse wasn't looking, which explained why only boys populated Neverland. Huh, he grimly thought to himself, _lost_ boys indeed, he wondered what happened to them all? _And_, he wondered if they would be able to undo the damage and get everyone back to their homes?

"Come on," he said, "Let's go find the others."

Viola was right behind him but Nancy stayed back for a moment. When she wasn't looking, Murdock grabbed her by the arm and said, "Come on, Cowboy," as he pulled her along to catch up with the others.


	5. Chapter 5

"Well I checked down at the courthouse," Face said as he kicked the door shut behind him, "And as far as anybody knows, there is no law on the books that says a parent cannot homeschool their kids, I certainly didn't find anything that suggests it's child abuse or worthy of incarcerating the parents and putting the kids in the foster system if that's _all_ the parents are doing."

"Well we kind of figured that already," Hannibal responded in an 'I'm not amused' tone from where he sat on the couch.

"Yeah, but this cements it," Face said.

"Okay," Hannibal said as he sat up straight, "So _why_ are the police _and_ the courts _and_ the judge so hot on locking up these people? If not this, _what_ crime did they commit, if any? And if _not_…"

"Then why' they bust in here and haul everybody out?" B.A. wanted to know.

"That's the $50 question," Hannibal said.

B.A. reached over the couch's back and poked him in the shoulder and corrected him, "That's the $10,000 question, Hannibal."

"I know," Hannibal nodded as he stood up, "But I'm figuring it _after_ the taxes."

B.A. growled.

Face checked his watch and said lowly so the women wouldn't hear, "Murdock's still not back yet with the girls?"

"He called from the store," Hannibal answered, "Evidently this is the grocery rush hour, _everybody's_ doing their shopping for dinner, and they're at the back of the line."

Face shrugged and murmured, "Just so long as there wasn't any trouble."

"Well Hannibal?" B.A. asked, "What're we gonna do?"

Hannibal sat down in a chair in the living room and said, "We shouldn't have to wait long to find out. If what these women said is right, the police ought to be here by tomorrow to haul them away. And if they _do_, they're going to be in for a rude surprise."

"Yeah but then what?" Face asked, "That's the problem with police, there are always more where they came from, we could have the whole SWAT Team surrounding the building, how're we supposed to get everyone away from _that_? You know how it is, they'd cook up every single charge imaginable to justify anything short of burning down the building to get at everyone here…and then there's _us_, if they'd manage to get their hands on _us_…"

"That's why they're not _going_ to," Hannibal told him.

"Fine, but _what's_ the plan for when they come?" Face wanted to know.

Hannibal scratched the back of his head and commented, "I'm thinking."

"Well think faster, would ya?" Face asked, "Tomorrow's going to be here in little over 12 hours. Unless they decide to come here _tonight_ instead."

Lorraine came out of the kitchen at that time and picked up the last part of the conversation and she told the men, "I doubt we'll have to worry about that, there's never been a time that they came in at night. Like I said, they do it in the morning when the men are at work."

"But your husband's not even in town," Face reminded her.

"I know that, and you know that, but I'm not sure they know it," Lorraine told him, "Instead they just know what the right time is when the husbands are generally away at work."

"It's...also," Hannibal thought, "A good time to be made a public spectacle. Break in at night and arrest people and no one's going to notice it as much as in the daytime when the whole block can see it. It's not like setting a house on fire in the dead of night, everybody sees the flames, it's a whole show, instead, something like this is favorably done in the break of day when people are still home and there can be a nice little crowd gathered around to see everything happen in broad daylight so there's no mistaking what's going on. Insult to injury."

"A can of Morton in the wound," she replied.

Hannibal nodded lightly, "That too." He flashed one of his more unnerving smiles to Face and commented, "If that's the case though, I know what we're going to do."

Lorraine went over to him and asked, "Are you going to be staying here?"

"Well that _was_ the idea," Hannibal said.

"It's just that with Jolene and Viola here, we're already kind of full up and I'm not sure where…"

"Oh, don't worry about that," Hannibal shook his head, "I doubt we'll be getting much sleep tonight anyway."

He didn't miss the small groan that escaped from Face's lips when he heard that as the Lieutenant left the room, and Hannibal just smirked and chuckled to himself. B.A. also went into the kitchen, and now it was just the two of them alone in the living room.

"Incidentally though, where _are_ you all sleeping?" he asked her.

Lorraine answered, "Daisy and Nancy have their own room and Viola's been bunking with them, and Jolene usually takes the couch but I suppose she could bunk with me tonight."

"What about that girl Chloe?" Hannibal asked, "She can't stay upstairs by herself, especially since that apartment's become a target. Sooner or later somebody's going to put the pieces together and come back and catch her."

Lorraine nodded, "I know, I'm just not sure what we're going to do with her."

Hannibal could hear the desperation in her tone as she spoke to him and he nodded in understanding, "It's difficult knowing what to do with a kid that won't talk."

"I don't know what happened to her," Lorraine told him, "I guess it could be shock but, I'd never think it would get this bad."

Hannibal made a small sound under his breath and remarked, "Never underestimate the bond between twins, it's more powerful than most people realize, and if something happens to one…all hell tends to break loose."

"And those idiots at the school figured they knew better than their own mother on what was best for them," Lorraine said, "You know, it's surprising how many teachers actually have kids, the way they go around thinking they know everything on how to raise kids, you'd swear they didn't have any." There was a brief pause before she added regretfully, "My kids would've never survived if they had to stay there."

Hannibal nodded slightly and said in agreement, "It's a jungle these days."

"It's more than you know," she replied, and tried to explain, "Nancy doesn't make eye contact with people, she won't look at adults, even when they speak to her, she just keeps her head down and clams up…she's _always_ been that way."

"Sounds like she's just plain shy," Hannibal commented.

"That's _one_ word for it," Lorraine told him, "There are others, and everybody says at her age she's supposed to have outgrown it, but she hasn't, and apparently that's my fault, something I did wrong, or didn't do right. I did what I could but you can't _make_ someone stop being uncomfortable around others."

Hannibal recalled, "She seemed assertive enough when they hired us."

"You can do anything when you _have_ to," Lorraine told him, "But if it's not an emergency or something _she_ wants, she just shuts down on everyone that she doesn't know."

For some reason, Hannibal didn't seem surprised by this comment and only remarked, "Self preservation, she doesn't give them anything that they can turn around and use against her as ammunition. Somehow she's already learned not to trust people."

"And all the specialists and 'professionals' at the school say it's a psychological disorder, present in people with sociopathic tendencies."

"You mean _psycho_pathic," Hannibal said.

"Not anymore, now they have a new term for it," she replied, "You need to stay more current on things."

Hannibal laughed uncomfortably and noted, "You seem to."

"I _have_ to," Lorraine said, "In this game you always have to stay two steps ahead of everyone else…" she shook her head and shrugged, "Otherwise they come busting in and drag you out like a common criminal and walk all over you. It's a hell of a way to live, Mr. Smith."

"Hannibal." Now it was his turn to pause as he stood up and told her, "It takes real courage to do what you do."

She shook her head, "I'm just a parent."

"That's what I mean," Hannibal nodded, "It's one of the hardest jobs, and the least appreciated. Especially the way you do it, your kids aren't being raised by babysitters or daycares or a television set all day, that was _you_, and when something was wrong you went all out to correct it for your daughters' sake. That's more than what most would do."

"It's never enough," Lorraine told him, "You get criticized if you don't do enough, and then you _really_ get hell if people think you're _too_ involved. They tear you apart, and everything you do. 'You're not a teacher, what do you know?' 'You're too incompetent, too _stupid_ to teach your own kids anything, you don't have a college degree, you can't be trusted, you'll teach your kids wrong and they'll _never_ function out in the _real_ world'."

"People are idiots," Hannibal said to her in a tone that might actually have passed for supposing to be comforting, as if there was some solace to be found in that comment, "And their children are cruel, usually by learned examples."

Lorraine looked to him and said, "I still can't believe you're actually here, I can't believe you're real, I can't believe my girls found you. I can't figure out _how_ they did."

"Well they're smart girls," he said, "Now the kids at B.A.'s daycare center _know_ he's a member of the A-Team, so your daughters probably talked to some of those kids and put it together. The real trick is that based on what you tell us, they were already looking for us _before_ that woman from children's welfare services came here. But given everybody else has already been taken out of the building, they must've known it was inevitable, but the timing on everything is just amazing."

"And you really think you can do something to help us?" she asked him.

"We're certainly going to try," Hannibal answered, "Look, we're going to be hanging around for a couple days to figure out what's going on, but we'll stay out of your way as much as possible, so just go about your days like you usually would."

Now it was Lorraine's turn to laugh uncertainly and say, "_We'll_ try."

"When Murdock gets back with the girls," Hannibal said, "We'll go up and have Chloe get her stuff and bring it all down here…incidentally what grade is she in?"

"10th," Lorraine said, "But ever since her family was taken away…"

"10th grade and she's only 14?" Hannibal asked in a tone that screamed minor disbelief and amaze.

"In a couple months actually," Lorraine answered, "It's definitely a more _flexible_ schedule."

"The circus rubber woman isn't _that_ flexible," Hannibal remarked, "So she could be a full graduate by the time she's 16?"

"Probably, yes," Lorraine said.

Hannibal whistled and commented, "Might not be able to beat the Chinese but at this rate kids like yours could probably beat out the English."

* * *

Once Murdock finally returned from the supermarket with the girls, they hauled in a grand total of 12 grocery sacks between them, filled with everything ranging from milk to bread to potato chips, and from soda pop to candy to steak, to frozen pizzas, frozen pies, cakes and some ice cream bars; and Murdock had little to report to Hannibal about what he was able to find out from the girls while out with them. He related his failed attempts to get a word out of Chloe, Hannibal looked to the teenaged girl who had parked herself on the couch, and murmured to Murdock to give it time. Though he himself was starting to wonder _what_ it would take to get a vocal response out of that girl.

While Jolene and Lorraine worked on dinner for everybody, Hannibal had Chloe take him upstairs and gather up the stuff in Jolene's apartment to take with them downstairs; her clothes, her schoolbooks, other than that, there wasn't a whole lot to pick up. Hannibal also noticed a faint cover of dust on the textbooks, clearly they hadn't been touched since her family had been taken away, perfectly understandable. He also noticed that there only seemed to be _her_ things in Jolene's apartment, for having a twin brother, there was a matching set of textbooks and a maybe not so matching set of clothes that were absent from the apartment. Either everything else was still left up in her own apartment, or after the family was taken away, somebody went up to the apartment and took everything else. But that, Hannibal decided, was a matter that would wait until tomorrow, time was of the essence here and they had to get everything ready for the first part of his plan. And for that to work, he had to make sure they had everybody together and didn't have to go playing hide and seek to find any of the kids.

"Is this everything?" he asked her.

She made her whole bottom lip disappear under her teeth and top lip and just nodded.

"Alright then," he said, "Let's go."

On their way out he took another look back at the apartment. It was a nice sized place for a mother and her child or children, and, prior to it being abandoned, he could tell it was kept in very good shape. There wasn't any clutter, everything was neatly put up, not perfect, _no_ home was _perfect_, thank God for small favors on that one, but it was nicer than most he'd seen. Looking around once more, he wondered to himself _what_ it looked like when there was _life_ flowing through this apartment? He let Chloe get by and he pulled the door shut on his way out and they returned downstairs.

They returned to Lorraine's apartment just in time for Face to approach Hannibal and hand him a card and say, "Alright Hannibal, here you go; you are Douglas D. Fernbinder, attorney-at-law, from the law firm of Feldman and Fern, in Devine, Texas."

Hannibal looked at the card, then at Face in the same scrutinizing manner and he said to the Lieutenant, "Are you serious?"

"You said to make sure we didn't pick a name somebody could know," Face said.

"Well," he looked around to make sure the girls weren't in earshot and he asked Face, "Where the _hell_ did you get this name from, did you use David Bowie's cut-up lyric technique?"

"Well actually _I_ wasn't the one who came up with the name," Face told him.

Hannibal glared at Face and didn't move his head an inch as he replied, "Of _course_ you weren't," and turned his neck clear around the other way to look at Murdock.

Murdock looked like he didn't understand what the problem was and asked, "Think it's good, Colonel?"

Hannibal fought back the huffing sigh that threatened to get loose. It was impossible to stay mad at Murdock.

"I think it'll be fine, I just hope nobody here actually _knows_ anybody in Devine."

"I'd say the odds of _that_ are astronomical," Face said.

Jolene came out of the kitchen and stopped when she saw the men and told them, "I'm afraid with all of us here, there's not going to be enough room at the table…"

"That's alright," Hannibal waved her off, "We'll be fine."

"Well actually Lorraine and I thought we'd let the kids eat in the living room," Jolene explained, "They likely _won't_ talk at the table anyway, uh…" she hesitantly added, "Especially with the four of you around."

"If this keeps up," Face murmured to Murdock, "I'm going to start taking it personally."

"Oh it's nothing personal," Jolene explained, "They're just…"

"Shy," Hannibal offered.

"Especially with men," Jolene added.

Hannibal nodded slowly and remarked, "Ironically they're probably better off for it."

"How do you figure that?" Face asked.

"It's very simple," Hannibal said, "They'd never go off with _any_ man they didn't know, less chance of them coming up missing, unlike too many kids who unfortunately trust too much."

Lorraine stood in the doorway to the kitchen and murmured in response, "Sometimes the mistake is trusting people you _do_ know."

* * *

After dinner was over and the dishes were done, while the kids were watching TV in the living room, the A-Team split up and made their rounds throughout the apartment complex to figure out if there was any way that anybody could gain access to Lorraine's apartment, should anybody have the bright idea to try breaking in in the middle of the night.

"Of course anybody _determined_ enough would be able to get in without much trouble," Face told Hannibal, "But for someone who doesn't want to draw much attention to themselves…all the doors are locked, all the windows are locked, and we're going to be on guard here all night, albeit in shifts, but how far could anyone get?"

"Probably not very far," Hannibal agreed, "That's _good_."

"Yeah but Colonel," Murdock spoke up, "You really think this plan for tomorrow is going to work?"

"In this world, most people believe there's no such thing as bad publicity," Hannibal said, "The local police force is _not_ made up of _those_ sorts of people."

Face went over towards Hannibal so what he was about to say wouldn't go further than the two of them and he said quietly, "Between you and me, Hannibal, I still can't help wondering about these people."

"What about them?" Hannibal asked.

"I don't know," Face shook his head, "There's just something about them that seems a bit…off."

"I'm sure going through what they have would make _anybody_ appear _off_, Lieutenant," Hannibal told him, "Those kids are practically too scared to move a muscle around here."

"_Not_ too scared to booby trap the whole apartment though," Face replied.

"They're trying to survive," Hannibal commented.

"Yeah, but _we're_ here now," Face said.

"Four _strange_ men not familiar to them," Hannibal pointed out, "They came for us because they needed us, _not_ because they trusted us."

"Huh, oh…I see your point," Face responded, "But you don't think…"

"We really have no idea _what_ to think, that's the problem," Hannibal said, "I'd suggest once everybody else goes to bed, we check around the apartment and see if we hear anything."

Face didn't get what Hannibal was hinting at, but he had an idea before their stay here was over, he _would_.


	6. Chapter 6

Later in the night they waited and watched as all together the four girls went into the second bedroom and closed the door behind them. Then it was just Lorraine and Jolene who were still awake and up in the living room. Both of them looked like the living dead with exhaustion but it was also obvious neither one of them was going to be going to sleep anytime soon.

"You said it yourself," Hannibal said as he sat down across from them, "These people _never_ bother showing up until morning, why don't you two go on to bed as well?"

Lorraine shook her head and remarked, "I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight."

"Me either," Jolene agreed.

Hannibal tried being reasonable, "There's nothing else you can do for now. We've got everything taken care of."

Lorraine looked at him through tired eyes and said, "Suppose you're wrong. Suppose _we're_ wrong. Suppose they _do_ come tonight when we don't expect it."

Hannibal nodded and replied, "_We_ expect it."

"If they _do_ come, what would you do?" Jolene asked.

"Trade secret," he said by way of answer.

Lorraine rubbed one tired eye and murmured, "I still can't believe you people are here."

"Yeah, we tend to have that kind of effect on people," Face said with a small grin.

"If only it wasn't the Army so often, eh, Face?" Hannibal replied, poking some of the air out of the Lieutenant's balloon.

"Ha-ha, very funny, Hannibal," he remarked.

"Well," Lorraine said as she pushed up on her hands to stand up from the couch "No rest for the wicked. Come on, Jolene."

"What do you mean?" Face asked.

"We'll be the first ones to say what we do is _not_ for everybody, it's not cheap, fast _or_ easy, it's a lot of work, for _both_ sides," Lorraine said as she picked up one of the text books off the girls' table, "Incase you didn't realize, school was a long time ago for both of us, and I never finished college so that already was a big red mark against me doing this with my girls, on top of the fact that I wasn't the best student in school. So every night when the girls are in bed, _we_ go over the lesson plan for the next day and get reacquainted with the material, some of it's changed since _we_ were in class but not a whole hell of a lot. But this way anything they _don't_ get we'll be able to explain to them, and depending on which class it is, sometimes there's a _lot_ to explain. Right now Nancy's having a lot of trouble in math."

"Viola's having trouble with English," Jolene added, "And both she and Daisy are having notable trouble with art history."

"Otherwise it's largely smooth sailing," Lorraine told Hannibal and nodded towards the bookcase in the living room, the middle row of which was lined with manila envelopes, "Take a look."

Hannibal looked to the shelf questioningly, but went over and pulled one of the envelopes off and saw it was addressed to Nancy from the school they were enrolled in…in Baltimore he noted. He opened the top flap and took out a lot of papers all jammed together.

"What am I looking at?" he asked Lorraine as he tried separating the pages.

"One of Nancy's tests," Lorraine told him, "Up through 8th grade all the tests are supplied in one: math, English, science, history geography, it's all done at the same time."

"What about after 8th grade?" Face inquired.

"This school _only_ goes up to 8th grade," Jolene explained, "Once the girls finish junior high we're going to have to find another homeschool correspondent that works for high school."

"Unless you decide to send them back to public school for that," Hannibal noted as he managed to pull the pages apart and saw they were from the science portion of the test, multiple choice questions and answers, and good marks all the way down.

"No way," Lorraine shook her head, "I wouldn't subject them to that, school only gets worse the older you get, the kids are getting more violent."

"And the schools," Hannibal commented, "Have no way of supplying the equipment or the manpower to police the whole student body, though they sure love to try, except when they _do_ they raise it to a police _state_ type of thing, a dictatorship if you will, a very dangerous thing to become."

"Exactly," Jolene responded.

Hannibal sorted through the science questions, the geography questions, several pages of writing paper that had an essay penned on them, and found what he presumed to be the school's version of a report card: a sheet of paper with boxes for all classes listed for that specific test, two metallic stickers on top to signify excellent work and all A's: spelling – A+; math – A; grammar – A; art history – A, history – A+; geography – A-; science – A.

"For having so many problems, you sure can't prove it by these test scores," Hannibal noted.

"It's not consistent," Lorraine told him, "Usually she averages B's in about half her classes."

"That's still considered good, isn't it?" Hannibal asked inquisitively.

"Of course it is," Lorraine said, "She always tries her hardest, it's just sometimes she gets the material, she remembers everything, sometimes she doesn't."

"Sounds about right," Hannibal nodded as he put the test back together the way he'd found it and stuffed it back in the envelope, "And the other girls fare about as well?"

"They vary in which classes are their strong suits and which ones see more B's than A's, but yes I'd say so," Jolene mentioned, "None of them have ever gotten anything lower than a B-."

Hannibal's eyebrows moved up and arched themselves when he heard that and he commented, "Hard to ask for more than that."

"If that's the case," Face said, "I don't understand what everybody's problem with this is, it sounds like it's working."

"Working better than if they were still in an overcrowded, uninterested school where the teachers can't be inconvenienced to slow down and help them with the materials they don't understand," Jolene told him a bit defensively, "But somehow everybody sees it as _we're_ the ones who are wrong."

Hannibal fished into his jacket pocket and took out a cigar and bit down on it as he sat down on the couch arm and said, "I still have my suspicions about what this whole thing's about, but don't you worry, we'll get to the bottom of this, find out who's responsible, and fix their little covered wagon."

"That's _red_ wagon, Hannibal," Face said.

"_That_," Hannibal told him, "Depends on how old this person or these people are, it sounds like a very narrow minded old fashioned view to me. Oh," he turned to Face and asked, "Did you manage to scam a car for tomorrow?"

"Hannibal, you're gonna _love_ it," Face said as he sat down on the couch, "Biggest Cadillac I could find, just _perfect_ for coming out of Texas. Only thing missing is a set of steer horns on the hood."

"That's fine," Hannibal replied, "That might just seal it."

* * *

Lorraine and Jolene finally turned in after 11, during which time it was decided who was going to take first watch and who would take second watch. By now the apartment was dark and quiet, everybody was careful not to make much noise as they went around the rooms checking everything. Face wasn't even sure what they were supposed to be listening for, but as he and Murdock made their rounds, they listened outside the bedroom doors just to make sure nothing sounded strange. In Lorraine's bedroom, everything sounded fine, listening at the girls' door however, Face thought he could hear some small unidentified sound, and he decided to investigate just to make sure.

Slowly, quietly, he worked the doorknob and got the door to open inch by inch without making too much noise. It didn't sound like any of the girls woke up by the noise, but then again he wasn't sure if they were asleep or just playing possum. He remembered the layout of the room pretty well so he didn't feel a need to worry about not having a light to guide him through as he decided to tiptoe in and just make sure everybody was still in bed.

Before Face even realized it, he felt his foot step on something, but he didn't have time to wonder what it was.

BANG!

"Ah!" he yelped as the noise scared the hell out of him, involuntarily taking another step forward.

BANG!

Murdock came in the door behind Face to see what happened, but all that happened was he also got in the middle of something that caused loud BANGs right under their feet. Stumbling around in the dark, they couldn't tell where they were stepping and several more BANGs ensued, as did high pitched yelps from both grown men.

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

"Ahhh!" Face yelled in frustration as he ran out of places to step without setting off another BANG.

Face tried stepping one way, Murdock tried another, but instead the two men just collided into each other, lost their footing and fell against something that felt like a cord, and the next thing they knew they heard loud bells ringing, and _then_ they felt something fall on them.

Hannibal appeared in the doorway and turned on the lights and asked automatically before he could even see what was going on, "What the hell's going on in here?"

Looking past the four wide awake and bright eyed girls who seemed only mildly surprised by what had happened, Hannibal looked to Face and Murdock. The scene that met him was nothing short of confusing and hilarious. His Lieutenant and his Captain were tangled up in what looked like party streamers and old fish netting, and at their feet were about three dozen popped balloons; and tied up somewhere was a cord with large metal bells attached that came up about waist high on the men when they walked into it.

Hannibal just folded his arms and tried _not_ to laugh at his men's expense, and failed miserably. Right behind him in came B.A. and the two mothers, who also experienced first confusion as to what the noise had all been about, and then hysterical fits of laughter at what they saw.

"Damn if you two don't get in _the_ strangest predicaments," he said over his chuckles.

Face let out a moaning, groaning, whining sigh and snapped at Hannibal, "Will you get us out of here already?"

"Alright, alright, Lieutenant, don't blow your stack," Hannibal said as he went over to the men and started to remove the netting. Upon closer inspection he realized that the streamers were _not_ streamers, but long strips of electrical tape that had been painted over to _look_ like streamers, but the adhesive was good and strong and relatively fresh and stuck the netting to the captives.

"Ouch," Murdock said as a piece of the tape ripped off some of the hair and skin on his wrist, "This is worse than the Joker's trick confetti in Batman."

"Alright," Hannibal said as he got his men out of the fine mess they'd walked right into, and turned to address the girls, "Who's going to be taking the credit for this little caper?"

All four girls raised their hands.

"Very funny," Face whined.

"You weren't supposed to come in here," Nancy said as she slid off the edge of her bed, "That's for intruders."

"Well it _works_!" Murdock noted.

"Great, now we have to set the whole thing up again," Viola grumbled.

"Oh no you're not," Jolene told her daughter, "You about gave us a heart attack the first time."

"Besides," Lorraine turned towards the A-Team and added, "I should _hope_ with these 'big strong men' here, that there won't be any further need tonight for booby traps."

"I hope so too!" Face replied.

"Alright everybody," Hannibal told them, "I know it's going to be difficult after _that_ little fiasco, but everybody go back to bed, it's late and we're going to hit the ground running first thing in the morning."

"Who're you telling?" Lorraine asked as she staggered back to her bedroom, "That's what we do _every_ day."

"Who's going to sleep after _that_?" Face wanted to know.

"_I_ am," Hannibal said, "You and B.A. are taking the first watch, then Murdock and I'll take over around 2, then we'll switch again."

"Ah geez," Face groaned at the idea of getting so little sleep through the night.

* * *

The rule of Hollywood was that the work day started at 5 A.M., this was especially true for the crew people who had to set up everything, but it was also notoriously true for the actors, some of whom would have to endure hours of makeup before the work day could officially start in filming. Even as 'just' a giant rubber monster, this was a process Hannibal knew well, so before the sun came up the next morning, _he_ was up, doing his own makeup, applying extra wrinkles through latex skin, a white handlebar mustache to match the wavy white wig he wore, then changed into an off-white 3-piece suit, complete with gold pocket watch on a chain that hung out of his jacket pocket, and borrowed a few of B.A.'s smaller rings to decorate his own knuckles to cement his character's appearance.

Just as the sun was coming up, Hannibal exited the building down the fire escape and made his way to the 1953 white Cadillac convertible Face had scammed for him, drove it around the block and by some miracle just managed to tuck it in an alley across from the complex's block and watched and waited. It took about an hour, but finally, the waiting paid off and Hannibal saw a police car pull up to the curb on the next block. Hannibal hit the gas and came squealing around the corner like a carefree eccentric kook and he pulled up to the curb right behind the police car, loudly hit the brakes and threw the car in park, and got out by climbing over the door, carrying a thin briefcase with him.

"Howdy, partners," he said in an over-exaggerated Texan accent as he approached the two policemen who had just gotten out of their car, "I'm looking for 1 West 73rd Street, could you tell me if'n I got the right place?"

"Yes sir," one of the policemen answered a bit confused, "That's the building right there."

"Oh _good_!" Hannibal exclaimed, "I'm looking for a couple people who live in there…couple nice young fillies by the names of, uh, Clover and Collins, that's it."

The two policemen looked to each other, each equally confused as the other, then they looked to the white haired man who looked like he'd either crawled out of a rerun of Hee Haw or a Jackie Gleason movie, and asked, "And what's your business with them, sir?"

"Oh! Allow me to introduce myself," Hannibal reached inside his jacket, "My card," he gave a business card to the second cop, then took his hat off and explained, "Name's Douglas D. Fernbinder, attorney-at-law, from the law firm of Feldman and Fern, in _De_-vi-i-i-ne, Texas! Either o' you boys eva been there?"

"Uh, no sir," the second cop answered as he handed Hannibal back his card.

"Oh it's a bea-U-tiful place," Hannibal told them, "But now I've got me some business out here to tend to. I'm taking this case pro bono, mm-hmm, I'm going to be representing these lovely ladies and I'm looking forward to it; I'm gonna get a lot of publicity on this case, I can feel it in my bones, it's gonna be all over the newspapers, all the radio stations, all the major news networks, _everybody's_ names going down in history with this case, mm-hmm."

The two policemen looked to each other again and quietly came to the mutual agreement that it would be better to leave now and _not_ get their names and faces all over the press with a guy like _this_ nut job fighting against them. Without a word, they turned around, got back in their car and drove off. Once the black and white was out of sight, Hannibal couldn't resist laughing and shaking his head, then he headed back on up to the 4th floor apartment.

"It worked," he said as he stepped in the door and took off his sunglasses and reached for his hat, "They aren't going to want to come back here anytime soon."

"It _really_ worked?" Lorraine asked, turning away from the window where she'd been watching the show down below.

"Well, for now," Hannibal said as he reached to pull off his mustache, then he noticed that the three girls were standing around staring at him.

"Something I can do for you?" he asked, a bit annoyed.

Instead, they just continued to look at him, and then Viola said, "There ain't no way."

"No way," Daisy repeated.

"That you come from _my_ loins," Nancy added, "Now I'm gonna go home and punch your mama in the mouth."

"And kick your mama in the butt," Daisy added.

"And put a lump on your mama's head," Viola concluded.

Hannibal looked to Lorraine, who was still standing at the window, and said simply, "Cute kids."

"Oh believe me, I raised them to be more polite than that," she told him.

"I'll believe it," Hannibal said as he peeled off his disguise piece by piece.

"Are you sure they bought it though?" Jolene asked, "You don't think they'll come back?"

"Oh _somebody_ will be back," Hannibal said, "But not _today_. This was just a stay of execution, _and_ a heads up to whoever's orchestrating this mess that they just hit one major bump in the road. But we need time to figure out what's going on around here. And in the meantime you can go about your regular routine, _almost_ as regularly as usual."

"Thank you," Lorraine said anxiously as she finally broke away from the window, "Alright girls, let's get breakfast and then let's get started for the day."

"Hey, I think we're missing someone," Face said, "Where's Chloe?"

"Probably still in bed," Daisy answered, "She stayed in our room last night."

"I'll go check," Face said, and headed off for the bedroom.

The door was left ajar so Face pushed it open and stepped in. The first bed was already made but Chloe was still asleep in the other one, and true to what Jolene had said, Chloe was _still_ wearing her brother's jacket and cap in the bed. Face silently wondered to himself what it would take to get a verbal response out of this kid, as he walked over to the bed and shook her arm to wake her up. Chloe's only response was to turn on her side and pull the covers up over her head.

"Come on, Chloe, it's time to get up," he said as he shook her more persistently this time.

No response, just a bunch of burrowing further under the covers. Face had half a mind to grab the covers around her and drag her out of bed in the midst of them, but he decided against it and decided to send a woman in to do the job instead. Jolene volunteered to go in and get Chloe out and while she did, Face retreated towards the kitchen where Lorraine had her own hands full getting everybody fed.

"Seems to be a real circus around here, doesn't it?" he asked.

"We manage alright," Lorraine responded as she cracked some eggs in a bowl, "It's a little more crowded than it used to be, but nothing I can't handle."

"Well if you'd like…" Face started to offer, but was cut off.

Murdock just happened to be passing by at that moment and under his breath he said to Face, "Wrong one, Face, remember _she's_ married."

Face just grinned and subtly reached his leg back and kicked Murdock as he walked by, and Face said to Lorraine, "If you need an extra set of hands to get everything ready…"

"No thanks," she replied, "I've got it."

"I see," Face said, feeling shot down.

"If you can wait until the table's free, I can get something cooked for the four of you too," she told him.

"Oh that's not necessary…"

"No really," she said as she turned to him, "It's the least I can do after you agreed to help us."

At that time, Jolene and Chloe entered the kitchen as well, Chloe sidestepped everybody and made her way over to the cupboards and pulled down a bowl and dug up a box of cereal.

"I'm just guessing," Face murmured to Jolene, "Her decision to quit talking hasn't had any effect on her appetite."

"Not as far as we can tell," she responded with a small shake of her head.

Face felt that corner of the kitchen was getting crowded so he moved over towards the table where the girls were seated talking amongst themselves, and Chloe who was pouring a bowl full of Froot Loops.

"You know," he said to nobody in particular at the table, "When I was a kid at St. Bartholomew's orphanage, I remember the sisters never even let us put sugar in the corn flakes, apparently they thought it built character not to." He picked up the cereal box and commented half under his breath, "If those old sisters could see the junk kids are eating today."

"Compared to what, exactly?" Viola asked as she looked up to Face, "How healthy would you say pancakes and waffles covered in butter and syrup are? Or how about donuts? People eat them for breakfast all the time, they're just fried dough and sugar." She stood up from her chair and added, "Do you have any idea what the nutritional value of a Pop-Tart is?"

Now Face was sorry he'd said anything, though he laughed lightly, and commented under his breath as he turned around and walked away from the table, "I hate a smart kid."


	7. Chapter 7

8 o' clock sharp, school was in session and the apartment was quiet as the TV and radio were turned off, and Daisy and Nancy were seated at the table with their textbooks, Viola sat on the couch with hers and Chloe just sat at the end of the couch with her arms folded against her and stared straight ahead at the TV set. As they worked around the families' routine in the apartment, the A-Team got a first hand view of exactly what went on in this apartment every day. It turned out that along with the textbooks and the tests, the school correspondent had also sent a lesson plan that explained in what order the classes were done, and how much material was covered each day.

Math was the first subject of the day for all of the girls: Nancy was in 7th grade, Viola and Daisy were both in 6th, and watching them go through their lesson plan for the day, it became obvious that math was not the universal language, aggravation at math was. Fortunately theirs mothers seemed to know the material and were able to explain it to Nancy and Viola, Daisy was the only one who didn't seem to need any help, though that was likely because she could listen to the examples Jolene had given Viola since they both worked in the same grade on the same problems. Half an hour later it was onto English, which got no complaints from anybody, though at the same time nobody was particularly ecstatic about it: Viola was reading The Story of a Bad Boy by Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Daisy read Theras and His Town by Caroline Dale Snedeker, and Nancy read Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte, and all of them looked like they'd rather have their teeth pulled than be doing this.

While making the rounds through the apartment, Hannibal happened to come across the rest of their schoolbooks and he caught a glimpse at the other books for English: Around the World in 80 Days, The Prince and the Pauper, David Copperfield, The Swiss Family Robinson, Johnny Tremain, all very classical and therefore 'important' where educators were concerned, though he could understand for this generation that had been raised on high speed car chases and action packed shootouts and big explosions, not particularly exciting. At the bottom was another, The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare, this name wasn't familiar, he flipped open the front cover and caught the copyright date, this one was new.

All the same, he could understand the lack of enthusiasm, he'd been in their room; of course he would never flat out maliciously invade people's privacy, especially young children, but he'd given the room more of a onceover than Face and Murdock had. One thing that had gotten his attention was that bookcase, he'd noticed that the shelves were double layered and taken a look to see what was on the back. And behind all those old volumes of The Hardy Boys and The 3 Investigators, concealed between all the more innocent books were some of the more recent additions to the world of fiction. Some stuff didn't raise much of an eyebrow, books based on the TV series "Mod Squad" and a couple for "Miami Vice", but then he also came across some of the new publications for men's adventure stories. For grown men whose imaginations were far more lively than their own lives were and were a way to cope with their own mundane, routine, mediocre and execrable lives, it was hardly suitable reading material for 10 year old girls. No doubt far more mature than anything these girls ought to be reading, no matter how advanced they were in school, all the same, Hannibal had a sneaking suspicion that these were not now nor had they previously already been read by these kids, and he might not agree with it if they were, but he'd be damned if he was going to blow the whistle on them for reading books.

But, he huffed to himself, he supposed this warranted some merit to the belief that kids were growing up faster these days, all the time they seemed to be proving themselves capable of enduring more than people gave them credit for. Of course, the funny part was, _those_ arguments were made in terms of what they watched on TV or in movies, nobody really questioned the contents of what books the children were reading. Not usually anyway, and certainly not _this_; now Hannibal was aware of some cases over the years where schools pulled questionable novels they didn't necessarily think were appropriate for the students to read, and sometimes those schools were helped to reach these decisions by overprotective parents, but Hannibal would bet his money on one thing for sure, _no_ school in this country was going to be teaching this new series about The Sergeant in English lit, though Hannibal couldn't resist the amusement that occurred to him as he considered that possibility. If that would ever happen, there would be a real heyday on schools exercising censorship and removing books from the curriculum and the school libraries. But again, he had to remember, even if that _did_ happen, it would be in a high school, _not_ a junior high or even an elementary school, as some still considered 6th grade to be. The whole thing made Hannibal scratch his head as he really started to wonder _what_ they'd gotten themselves involved in. Still, the fact remained, if _that_ was your idea of good reading, you likely were _not_ going to get much out of Wuthering Heights or of stories of people from pioneering days, colonial times or the Victorian era, not like _this_ anyway.

* * *

By 10 o' clock, the girls went on break for half an hour, they closed their books, turned on the TV and huddled around it and kept the volume down low.

"Maybe it's just me," Hannibal said to Lorraine curiously as the adults gathered in the kitchen, "But didn't they used to call this recess and the kids went _outside_ for it?"

"They used to," Lorraine told him, "But we had to switch to keeping them inside during school hours when people started nosing around."

"Like who?" Face asked.

"It started with truant officers," Lorraine explained.

"They still use those?" Murdock asked.

"People started coming by and inquiring _why_ the girls weren't in school," Jolene told the A-Team, "We tried to explain it, but they weren't hearing it."

"Like most people in this world, they only saw what they wanted to," Lorraine added, "So _now_, the only time the girls can go out during school hours and not have to worry, is on the lunch hour, otherwise they have to wait until 3 o' clock to go out."

"I see," Hannibal nodded slowly.

"Don't they do anything around the apartment?" Face asked.

"Well," Jolene explained, "It's difficult, people just don't get it. When people would come _to_ the building, come in to see someone in an apartment, you couldn't make much noise or they'd call the school, the truant officers, etc., so they couldn't play any music during school hours, the TV has to be down, they couldn't run around too much or it'd drawn all sorts of attention, they had to be quiet pretty much all day, otherwise somebody would turn us in."

"Hell of a way to live," Hannibal observed.

"Who're you telling?" Lorraine asked.

"Face," Hannibal turned to his Lieutenant, "I need you to get a list of all the tenants who used to live in this building, get these two to help you, find out which ones just left, which ones got arrested, and see if you can find out where they are now, _and_ what happened to their kids."

"Right, Hannibal."

"You really think you're gonna be able to fix this?" Lorraine asked Hannibal.

"We'll either do it or die trying," Hannibal answered.

"Or try dying," Face added with a small hint of humor in his voice.

"And maybe then we'll try tie-dyeing," Murdock added with a barely contained giggling grin.

"Shut up you crazy fool," B.A. told the pilot.

* * *

By lunch the girls had also covered the daily chapters for art history, science, and a course titled 'Critical Thinking' that Face still didn't get the point of. At 1 o' clock sharp school was back in session and now for Viola and Daisy they had spelling words to work on while Nancy, even less enthusiastic than the others were, had a course on poetry that required reading through some of the more famous and less famous prose that came out of the 19th century and the briefly mentioned lives and times of the people who wrote them. Even though Hannibal had told the mothers that he and his men would stay out of their routine as much as possible, they had some mild disruption when Murdock called out spelling cues from the sideline, only to get some jabs and threats from B.A. to shut up and stay out of it.

Now, given that this way of schooling differed from traditional methods in that there was no teacher at the blackboard yapping till their lips fell off spoon-feeding the information to the kids, and instead they just read the required chapters for that lesson themselves, Hannibal had figured that history would be a relatively quiet period. He was wrong. Though that was his own fault. He'd been passing by the girls' table where they worked and couldn't help noticing something one of them had written on a piece of paper. He grabbed the sheet and read it,

"The teachers nag,

And look at you,

Like a dirty dish rag."

He looked down at Nancy since she'd been closest to it and commented, "That's charming. Is that for your poetry class?"

"I didn't write it, I just copied it," she remarked.

"Who _did_ write it?" Hannibal inquired.

"Myrle Dansby," she answered.

"And who's Myrle Dansby?" Hannibal asked as he took out a fresh cigar and put it in his mouth.

"A 12 year old whose family migrated to California during the Dust Bowl and who got treated like garbage just like all the other 'Okie' children," Nancy told him. She picked her history book up from the table and held the covers as far apart as possible without ripping them and said, "See?"

Hannibal bent his head down and saw that the current chapter in her history book _was_ covering the Dust Bowl and the transition from the Panhandle to the California orchards and squatter camps.

"I see," he replied as he straightened himself up again.

Nancy put her book back on the table, then looked up to Hannibal and asked him casually, "How old are you?"

The question took him by surprise and he about swallowed his cigar. He rolled his eyes to an imaginary 4th wall and told her nonchalantly, "Too old for you."

"Were you in school when this was happening?" Nancy asked him.

"Yes," he answered.

"_With_ them?" Nancy pointed to the pictures in her book of the migrant children.

"No," Hannibal shook his head, "I went to school more towards Hollywood, but make no mistake, the kids I attended with didn't come from money, and everybody knew it."

"Still…" Nancy sneered up at him and remarked, "I wonder what you would've made of these kids if they'd gone to your school."

"A lot of people like to forget the way the migrants in this state were treated in the 30s and 40s," Hannibal stated, "And it's no wonder. Even though most of them were white, they were well informed nobody wanted them around: not in their shops, not at their movie houses, not where they were hiring, didn't want _those_ kids in _their_ schools with all the other kids, the hospitals denied them entrance and let migrant children die after they became disease ridden at the squatter camps in the middle of nowhere, because nobody wanted them bringing all their dirt and poverty and misfortune upon the 'white people' out here in their nice clean cities and towns."

B.A. grumbled under his breath and murmured, "_That_ sounds familiar."

"And they didn't want Okie children attending school and therefore were made to sit in the back, on the floors, ignored except when they were ridiculed by the other kids and the teachers because they were poor and wore rags and overalls and went barefoot. Nobody wanted them in school with the _normal_ kids because the teachers thought they were a bunch of dirty, dumb hicks from the farm too _retarded_ to learn how to count or read or anything and therefore considered the lot of them a waste of time to bother with," Nancy added, "_That_ sounds familiar too, it's a song we know _very_ well by now." She looked up to Hannibal and added, "You see, we _too_ are _almost_ human, almost just like the _real_ people out there."

"No wonder you excel in history," Hannibal noted cynically.

"But of course," Nancy responded with a touch of sarcasm, "Martyrdom is widely popular throughout all history, a subject I relate to _very well_. A subject we _all_ relate to."

"We know the feeling," Hannibal replied lightly.

"Not like this you don't," Nancy told him.

"That's enough, Nancy," Lorraine stepped into the room, "Get back to the chapter, and stop being rude to our guests. It _was_ your idea to bring them here after all."

"Well he doesn't," Nancy told her mother, "All they have to worry about is the government and the military, we're persecuted by _everybody_: police, social workers, the courts, the teachers, _and_ our own neighbors."

"_Enough_," Lorraine firmly told her daughter, though once Nancy was bent over her history book again, Lorraine turned to Hannibal and said under her breath, "I'm afraid she's not wrong though. Anybody who doesn't homeschool their kids _doesn't_ seem to get it, and for some reason that's a threat to them."

"People always fear the unknown," Face commented.

"More than that," Murdock chimed in, "They're afraid of anybody that runs around free."

"Thank you, MacGyver," Viola spoke up from her seat at the table.

"Don't you start too," Jolene said as she came out of the kitchen.

"He has a point," Hannibal told the women, "Your children have more freedom than the ones at the other schools, this method doesn't punch a time clock, it's not exact, you define your own scheduling and can change it at any time, and they _still_, it seems, accomplish the same amount of work, if not more, in the same amount of time or less than it takes all those other kids. And yes, that's going to be seen by some as a threat, but not so much as the fact that you have the _freedom_ to do just that."

"We don't fit their formulae and therefore _that_ makes us a threat," Jolene concluded, "Is that really what this is all about though? It seems like a lot of trouble to make over nothing."

"There was a lot of trouble to be made over simply being Jewish in Germany too once upon a time," Hannibal replied, "Their persecutors certainly _found_ the time to bother then. I guess it lends credibility to that old saying. Idle hands are the devil's workshop."

* * *

3 o' clock in the afternoon and school was done for the day. Hannibal watched as the girls got up from the table, stacked all their books on top of each other, as well as their writing pads and notebooks, and let out a sigh of relief to be done for another day.

"Now that that's done with, maybe we can have some fun around here," Hannibal said, and turning to his captain he added, "Murdock, you know where the park is near here, right?"

"Sure, Colonel."

"Fine, take the girls down there and keep an eye on them, but _don't_ encourage them," he added teasingly.

"Okay, Hannibal," Murdock said, and went to round up the girls.

"Hannibal, are you sure that's a good idea?" Face murmured to the colonel.

Hannibal turned to his lieutenant and asked, "What's the matter with it, Face?"

"Are you sure sending Murdock is the right idea?" Face asked.

"Murdock knows what he's doing. If he could survive his crash in 'Nam I'm sure he can handle 4 girls," Hannibal replied as the captain headed out the door with said four girls right ahead of him.

"But do you think it's a good idea sending him alone?" Face asked, "After all you're sending him incase there's trouble, and what if there is?"

"If there is it won't be much," Hannibal told him, "School's out now, there's nothing that anyone can legally or even under the guise of legally, do to those girls, they'd have to come _here_ where we are to try and accomplish anything for their agenda, _whatever_ it is."

"Whatever it is?" Face repeated slowly, "Then you don't think it _is_ because they homeschool their kids?"

"Oh I have no doubt," Hannibal said, "That there are some people in the world that are fanatic enough to do just that. Like Murdock said, people fear whoever runs around free, and that's these people, they don't conform and do what everybody else does, so some people consider that a very _real_ threat."

"Careful, Hannibal," B.A. told him, "You starting to sound paranoid."

"Only two apartments are left occupied in this whole complex," Hannibal pointed out and shook his head, "That is _not_ paranoia." To both of his men he added, "These parents get arrested, their kids are taken away from them, where are they put? In foster care, where are they sent _then_? _Right_ into the public schools their parents fought so hard to keep them out of. The judges who are handling these cases have very strong personal feelings of opposition against what these families are doing, and therefore would be only too happy to go along with whatever the police and the People have concocted for them. That's not a win-win situation for whoever's behind this conspiracy? What is?"

* * *

"I'm a bird, I'm a plane, I'm a choo-choo train, TOUCHDOWN!" Murdock whooped and hollered as he ran up the wrong end of the park slide, jumped over the side and grabbed hold of the gym rings on the swing set, and used the forward momentum of swinging on them to project himself over, and up, onto the monkey bars, where he held on by one hand and with the other scratched himself and writhed around howling like a monkey. He spun around hanging onto the bar and realized that his efforts to get a reaction out of the girls was having very little effect. The only one watching him was Viola; he spotted Nancy and Daisy seated on a couple of swings talking to themselves as they lightly pushed back and forth on them. And Chloe…Murdock looked around to see which way she'd gone and he saw Chloe standing on the top of a climbing tower that looked a lot taller than would be safe for kids to play on. She stood at the top looking at the ground below her, almost as if she was contemplating jumping off of it.

"Chloe!" Murdock hollered as he dropped down from the monkey bars and sprinted over to the tower, "Don't do it!"

Murdock grabbed onto the bars of the tower that pointed every which way with large gaps between them to climb through and started making his way up towards her. She watched him through the corner of an eye but otherwise didn't move; her feet remained firmly planted, not a single muscle moved in her entire body. Murdock reached and stretched and pushed up with momentum, and finally reached the top of the tower and realized they were even higher up than he'd realized.

"I made it, Ma, top of the world," he murmured under his breath.

Before he had a chance to think, or she had a chance to react, he grabbed Chloe and pulled her back from the edge, but was careful to make sure neither of them lost their footing and made the rough trip 17 feet down. Sure people survived longer falls than that, but it was certainly high enough to do some serious damage, especially if it was intentional; after all it was all rock and concrete down below, not the ideal means for making an emergency jump by any means.

Murdock was struggling to catch his breath as he slowly backed away from the edge, inch by inch, and just when he thought things were going to calm down, he had a sudden jabbing pain in his back and he yelped in response. He tried not to lose his grip on Chloe but she broke away from him, and Murdock was able to twist and turn from side to side as he was being assaulted to see that it was Nancy and Daisy beating him all up and down his back with their fists.

"Hey!" he yelled as he realized it wouldn't take much to send him right off the edge, "What gives?"

"What's the big idea of grabbing Chloe like that, huh?" Nancy demanded to know as she dug her doubled fists into his back again.

"Yeouch!" Murdock hollered, and sidestepped so he could grab them and keep them off of him, "_Stop that_ will you?"

"Answer the question," Daisy told him.

Murdock turned to the older girl and saw she was standing off to the side of the building's top with her hands thrust into her pockets and she looked like she didn't have any idea what was going on. Realizing she wasn't going to help him explain his own position, Murdock explained, "I thought she was going to jump!"

The girls stopped trying to lunge at him and Nancy asked him, "Are you nuts?"

"That's what they've been saying about me for 10 years," Murdock answered, "What's going on?"

"You really think Chloe's dumb enough to _jump_?" Daisy asked, "You're crazier than _we_ are."

"Well then," Murdock looked again to the teenaged girl and asked, "What _was_ she doing on the edge?"

"She _always_ does that," Nancy told him as they got loose from his grip, "She's not an idiot, she knows what she's doing, she knows how to climb up, down, backwards, even with her eyes closed. She'll _never_ fall."

"Well I sure hope that's true," Murdock replied, "But that's still a dangerous thing to do."

"Which is why _she_ does it because she's older," Daisy spoke up, "She has more experience at it."

Murdock's head was swimming, he addressed all the girls and told them, "Let's get back down to the ground so I can figure this out. High altitudes don't help with figuring."

One by one they all climbed down and were back on the park ground, which Murdock could've just fallen on his knees and kissed then and there. He could manage being thousands of feet up in any aircraft, no matter how questionable, how shaky, how iffy, face any danger, meet any threat, but an experience like _this_ had just about been enough to put him right over the edge, mentally speaking.

Murdock's first order of business was with Chloe, without really thinking he marched over to the girl and started to ask her, "Does your mo," then he realized what he was saying and instead turned to the other girls and asked them, "Do your mothers know she does this?"

"No," Viola answered matter-of-factly, "Why would they?"

Well, it was a good point, Murdock was just guessing this wasn't ordinarily something kids did at home unless they tried doing it from the landing of the stairs. All the same, Murdock's legs felt like rubber and his face felt hot, and he was starting to get a good idea of what it was like to be a parent to teenaged children. Regardless, the fact remained he was _not_ a parent and therefore was very limited in what he could do with these kids. So he decided not to do something he would regret, and instead exhaled long and slowly, before turning to the girls and saying to them, "While we're here, let's stick to a game that takes place on _ground_, okay?"

The girls looked to one another and each other questioningly.

"What's the matter?" Murdock asked, "Isn't there a game you usually play when you come out here?"

"We used to," Viola answered hesitantly.

"Ghostbusters," Nancy said more affirmatively as she glared up at him.

"But we can't play it now, we don't have enough players," Daisy added.

Murdock did a quick head count to see if he missed anything and he commented, "There're four of you here."

"That's not enough," Nancy said, "Not _those_ Ghostbusters, the real ones, you know," she pointed to herself and said, "I'm Spencer."

"He's Tracy," Daisy added, pointing to an invisible character, then to herself, "I'm Kong."

Now Murdock got it. "You mean that old TV show?"

"Not so old," Nancy spoke up, "There's a new cartoon of it out."

"So to play _that_ game," Viola explained, "We need three people to be Eddie, Jake and Tracy the Gorilla, then we also need somebody to be Prime Evil, and one of the girls was always Futura."

"And I always got stuck playing Belfry the Bat," Daisy added almost resentfully.

"How come?" Murdock inquired.

Daisy cleared her throat, plugged her ears, and let out a loud high pitched screeching yell that should've shattered glass if there was any around. By the time she finished, Murdock's whole body felt like a piano tuning fork vibrating inside and out.

"I see," he murmured as he forced his body to stop shaking limb by limb. Once his arms stopped feeling like Jell-o at his sides he said to them, "So maybe the game's changed a bit but the rules are the same, right?"

"I suppose so," Nancy replied.

"We never thought about it after the others were taken away," Viola explained.

"Okay," Murdock said, "I can understand that, but, until we get everything settled, life still goes on, right? So the game can still go on, and since there aren't as many players now, there'd be room to switch everyone around. So," he looked to Daisy and said, "Instead of being Belfry, you would be…"

"Eddie Spencer," she answered gleefully as she stepped up.

"Right, and you would be…" Murdock turned to Viola.

"That would make me Jake Kong," Viola pointed to Nancy and explained, "She's the only one _mean_ enough left to be Prime Evil."

"And that would make Chloe Futura, so that gets everybody sorted out," Nancy said, "Except we still need somebody to play Tracy the Gorilla."

Murdock had the strangest feeling he'd already inadvertently walked into that one, so to humor the girls, he raised his hand and said in a deep, guttural voice, "Okey-dokey."


	8. Chapter 8

"Okay," Face said in a winded tone as he sat down at the kitchen table in Lorraine's apartment and used the tip of a pen to point to the numbers he'd jotted down on a notepad, "There are 4 apartments on each floor of this building and there are 8 floors to the building, which means…"

"32 apartments," B.A. told him.

Face looked mildly annoyed but responded civilly, "Thank you, B.A. Anyway, before everything went to hell," he explained to Hannibal, "It looks like 30 of the apartments were occupied, leaving only 2 available."

"We know how to count, Lieutenant," Hannibal smugly reminded him.

"Yeah well," Face continued, "As of now, only 2 apartments are left occupied…of those remaining, based on what I was able to find out, it seems that 10 families just packed up and sneaked out in the middle of the night, the rest were all arrested and hauled away."

"And where are _they_ now?" Hannibal asked.

"Most of them are still in jail," Face explained, "The attending judge at arraignment set astronomical bail amounts that they couldn't possibly hope to raise, even to make the 10% minimum."

"And every day they spend in jail awaiting something to happen," Hannibal added, "That's another day their kids spend in the state foster system." Another thought occurred to him and he asked Lorraine, "Who's the landlord for this building?"

She and Jolene looked to each other and thought about it for a moment, letting the sounds of a few possible names trip off their tongues, before Lorraine told Hannibal, "Mr. Borge…he only comes around once a month to get the rent, it's easy to forget him."

"You mean he doesn't live in this building?" Face asked.

"Oh no," Jolene said.

"Huh, how about that?" Face asked, "I thought only slumlords didn't live in their own complexes."

"This is hardly a slum though," Hannibal said, "The upkeep looks like it'd be murder."

"We've had very few problems with it," Lorraine told him.

"Nothing short of a miracle there," Hannibal noted, "Places half this size often have five times the problems. Where do we find this landlord of yours?"

"I have his address," Jolene said, "He lives clear across the city."

"I think we better pay Mr. Borge a visit," Hannibal told the others.

"You think he knows something, Hannibal?" B.A. asked.

"Just a working theory," Hannibal replied as he took a cigar out of his pocket and bit down on it, "Though it wouldn't hurt to try all angles."

Lorraine took a couple steps toward him and asked him, "You think he's connected to it somehow?"

"He might know something," was all Hannibal was willing to say at the time.

"And he wouldn't tell us?" Jolene asked.

"It's just something worth looking into," Face told her.

Hannibal glanced over the schoolbooks left on the coffee table and he called behind him to Lorraine, "What about Chloe? All that girl did today was stare at the television set and it wasn't even on."

"I'm still working in the 6th and 7th grades," Lorraine said, "I need time to get adjusted to 10th grade curriculum before I can help her with it, I couldn't even find a lesson plan, I'm not sure if they issue them for high school."

Hannibal scratched his head as he glanced over the textbooks on the table and noted, "Maybe it's me but it seems for a high school student she's got a light load here. Did she even bring everything?"

Lorraine looked at what he was looking at and concluded, "I'm not sure."

He turned to her and asked, "Which apartment upstairs was her family living in?"

"It's two floors up," Lorraine answered.

"Show me," Hannibal told her, "Let's see what got left behind when the cops hauled the family out."

"What if Murdock comes back with the girls?" Face asked the Colonel, "What'll we do with them?"

"I'm sure between three adults you can figure out something to keep 4 children occupied," Hannibal said as he followed Lorraine out the door and over to the stairs, "And if not, we're in more trouble than I thought."

* * *

Two floors up, they found the apartment unlocked, no surprise. Stepping inside, it was obvious _nobody_ had been living there for a while. Everything had been left behind, all the furniture, all the framed photos on the walls, the rugs on the floors, and a half dead potted plant in the corner. It felt like stepping into a ghost town; it did not have the feel of the occupants simply vacated, it felt like there had been many deaths in this apartment and the disgruntled spirits still loomed in the air.

"So since Chloe and her brother are twins, they're both in the same grade, does that mean their mother still had to pay for two separate sets of schoolbooks?" Hannibal inquired.

"Of _course_," Lorraine told him like it was the dumbest question he could ask, "What did you expect?"

Hannibal shrugged and replied, "Just seems like a waste of money to me, they shared a womb, they share a mind, they don't need to cheat off each other, they'd know what each other's thinking anyway."

"But you still need _two_ sets of tests for each of them," Lorraine pointed out, "And you can't get the tests without getting the whole package."

"I guess education's a racket _anywhere_ you turn," Hannibal commented, "As long as something's a law, people are going to squeeze every dollar out of it that they can."

He found the bedrooms and took a look around. The typical American teenager's bedroom: clothes scattered everywhere, superhero comic books laying around everywhere, a ghetto blaster resting on the desk with a few cassettes, rock star posters on the walls, otherwise the room was very well put together and fairly clean. It didn't make sense how anybody could claim abuse, neglect, whatever.

"I found her brother's schoolbooks," Lorraine called out from the living room, "Looks like some of hers get mixed in with his."

Hannibal backed out of the bedroom and commented, "I can't imagine what it must've taken for that girl to leave this apartment…but then again I can't imagine what compelled her to stay here after her family was taken away either."

"No choice, it's as simple as that," Lorraine said, "She had no other family to go to after they were gone, and then she couldn't stay here any longer without joining them."

"Is that a common trend nowadays?" Hannibal asked, "No extended family?"

"None in the immediate area," she answered, "This wonderful extension of the nuclear family ideal they hammered into our heads in the 50s, a husband and a wife can suddenly do the work of a village and when the husband is a lowlife scum sucking leech of the earth, then the weight of the world's suddenly put on the mother, and she better succeed at it without a net, or else."

"Yes," Hannibal remarked cheekily, "And that's a very old dance they've been doing since Hawthorne's time."

"Hawthorne," Lorraine said the name testily, "Hathorne."

Ha_w_thorne," Hannibal corrected her, "Emphasis on the W."

"Added W you mean," she told him, "He descended from Judge John Hathorne who conducted the Salem Witch Trials, Nathaniel was _born_ in Salem you know. Naturally he decided to make sure nobody could draw that connection by altering his family name. _Everybody_ tried to forget, tried to make the past go away once the smoke cleared, that's why nobody can tell what really started it all, because records were destroyed out of embarrassment and mortification at the participation."

Hannibal's eyebrows went up slightly and he leaned back in a gesture of surprise, "I take it history was _your_ strong suit."

"Hardly," Lorraine responded, "It's just that I've become an expert on witch hunts. In the 50s it was communism, _now_ it's if your kids don't go to public school, then we might as well be 300 years and 3000 miles ago…"

"I doubt it's as bad as all that," Hannibal started to say.

"Oh no?" Lorraine replied defensively, "Know this, Mr. Smith, in Salem not one single confessed witch ever hanged, those that died were those that maintained their innocence. Convicted and condemned without a shred of tangible evidence, all based on spectral visions, something that couldn't even be proven today if it was real, never mind 300 years ago when people took failed crops as a sign somebody had hexed them. A bunch of malicious teenagers start writhing and screaming and saying somebody is burning them and pinching them, and the whole court ate it up with a spoon like it was pudding, that was evidence enough for them. Then you take _us_ today, nobody can come in and point to any shred of evidence that says we're abusing our kids, not in any sense of the word: no bruises on them, no dirt in this apartment, good food put on the table at every meal, none of them walking around in ratty clothes, they're clean, they're healthy, they go out and do everything that other kids do, they can't even prove that we're not fit to teach them because every single test that is graded by a _certified_ teacher comes back showing full evidence to the contrary, and what the school can't prove, the girls themselves can, you need only ask them, they can answer. They're not antisocial misfits, they're merely their own people, with their own minds, not indoctrinated, brainwashed little robots, they also know how to behave, they just choose _not_ to at certain times, but you're never going to see any of them trying to kill someone just because they made them mad, not like some of these kids you see on the 9 o' clock news. Not one shred of evidence that we're doing anything wrong, certainly nothing illegal, but is that stopping the police? The courts? No…if anything they're only going at fuller force than before."

Facetiously Hannibal said to her, "You ought to just rent out a podium. Miss Collins, I can appreciate how rough this has been on you, but you wave that flag any harder," he wagged his finger at her, "And you're gonna break the pole."

"You worry about your own pole," she warned him, "It's all good and well for you to come in here for a couple days and say you get it, but you don't, you don't have any idea what it's like. Do you even _have_ children, Mr. Smith?"

"Ah…" Hannibal thought for a minute, "No, I suppose not."

"Then you could never understand it," she told him.

"Now look," Hannibal said to her.

"_You_ look," Lorraine cut him off, "I know you think of those three men downstairs as being _your_ boys, but it's not the same, it's in no way the same. They're already grown, if anything happens to them, they can just break out of wherever they are and take it on the run, our children can't do that, _we_ can't do that. If anything happens to us, if we ever get caught, that is the _end_ and there's no Court of Last Resort for us, do you understand _that_, Mr. Smith?"

He nodded, "Yes, _that_ much I do, because if the military ever catches _us_, it's the same end of the line, except ours leads straight to a firing squad."

Lorraine was not convinced, she looked Hannibal dead in the eyes, her teeth gritted, and she said to him, "Just try imagining losing one of your Teammates and somebody tells you that you could get another, you could just replace one of them, could you do that? That's what they always say to women whose children are taken away from them, that they can just 'have more', as if they're a collection of dishes or something, instead of the individual human beings you've known all their lives and know they could never be replaced. That's the end of the line _I'm_ looking at, once these people get your kids, you _never_ get them back."

Hannibal hadn't so much as moved a single muscle during her last speech. Not really wanting to get into it with her again because it was obvious how raw these wounds were for her, he slowly and calmly told her, "That was then, this is now, and now _we're_ here and things are going to be different."

"How?" she wanted to know.

The Colonel offered an unfamiliar smile and told her, "You just leave that to the professionals, we've never lost one yet. It would be an embarrassment to our record to start now."

* * *

"Jonny, I do not see Bandit anywhere," Violet said in a bad Indian accent as she and Daisy climbed the stairs up to their floor and looked around the hallway.

"Good, then let's get out of here," Daisy replied as she came dashing up the stairs behind her, and they made a mad dash for their apartment.

Behind them, up the stairs came Chloe and Nancy who were 'talking' amongst themselves, rather Nancy was talking while Chloe just listened and nodded occasionally in agreement. And bringing up the rear was Murdock, who was just about exhausted from chasing four girls in four different directions around the park for two hours straight.

"Oh boy, Billy," he commented to his invisible dog, "The next time we go to that park, I'm gonna need you to sniff them out for me when they start hiding." As if the incident on the climbing tower hadn't been bad enough, during a game he couldn't find any trace of Nancy or Violet and wound up climbing five trees, one telephone pole, and a lamp post before he could spot them, and going up hadn't been so bad, but getting down, especially from that last one, had been a real doozy. That or next time he was going to have to take backup, either Face or B.A., or maybe both. Hoo boy, the day it took 3 commandos to wrangle 4 kids, it was a bad day for the nation. And not so good a day for the A-Team either, if word of this ever got out…

The Captain just about collapsed in the middle of the stairwell when he saw Hannibal coming down the stairs, barely even pausing long enough to talk to Murdock.

"Murdock, I'm going to go find a phone booth and make some calls, I _don't_ want those girls hearing what I'm going to say or to whom I'm going to be saying them, so will you and the others keep an eye on them until I get back?" and before he even got an answer, the Colonel was down to the third floor.

Murdock let out a garbled strained scream of frustration and just about threw himself over the banister to land down on Hannibal, but thought better of it and let the Colonel leave with his spleen intact. After a minute's rest on the stairs, he went up to the 4th floor and went to join the others in the Collins apartment.

"How'd it go, Murdock?" Face asked as he stepped out in the hallway to meet the pilot.

Exhausted though he was, Murdock maintained an optimistic, easygoing smile and said as though it were the simplest thing in the world, "Just a regular time at the rodeo, Faceman, what's been happening here?"

"Not much," the Lieutenant confided in him, "Hannibal wants us to pay the landlord of this place a visit."

"Okay," Murdock said in a winded gasp for breath, "What floor's he on?"

"He doesn't live in the building," Face told him.

"Heh," Murdock said discontentedly, "Fred Mertz he ain't."

"Or Mr. Roper for that matter," Face remarked.

"Face," Murdock tried taking a step forward and wound up on the floor with a set of legs feeling like jelly, he ignored this and pressed on with his question, "What do you think is really going through the Colonel's mind? Do you think that he thinks that this is really just about what these people think it is or do you think he thinks it's something else?"

"I think that he thinks that they think…" Face did a double take, "Wait, what?"

Murdock gestured frantically with one hand and said, "Do you think it's really because all these people didn't put their kids in public school that the police forced them all out?"

Face shrugged, "It seems as good a reason as any. I know it's happened to people in other states but," he shook his head, "I doubt it's on as grand a scale as this. Come in and haul out a whole building full of them? It sounds very…"

"Ah, totalitarian? Futuristic dystopian?" Murdock offered.

"Something like that," Face said.

"The whole thing ain't right, Faceman, something's off somewhere and it's making everything out of whack. All we can do is figure out what it is and figure out how to put a stop to it."

"Easier said than done," Face reminded the pilot, "We've got a houseful of Tasmanian devils to keep an eye on while Hannibal's out doing God knows what. To make matters worse, both Jolene and Lorraine had to run out and pick up some things, so that leaves us alone with the kids."

"Well then," Murdock thought quickly, "We're just going to have to make sure they all stay in one place."

"How?" Face asked.

"Easy, _we'll_ stay in one place, then they'd have no reason to split up," Murdock told him.

Face rolled his eyes and just grumbled and moaned to himself.

* * *

"Where's my mother?" Violet asked cautiously as they looked around the apartment and realized they were alone with the A-Team.

"She ran out to the drugstore to pick up some aspirin," Face explained as he and Murdock came in the door.

"Where's _my_ mother?" Daisy asked.

"_She_," Face answered, "Went to drop off the utility bills. What's wrong?"

The two girls looked to each other closemouthed and with questioning eyes. Nancy took it upon herself to answer, "They need someone to help them with a practice test for history."

"A what?" Face did a double take.

"They have a few questions they have to answer before they take their real test," Nancy explained, "It's supposed to better determine if they know enough for the real test."

"I…see," Face replied, "Well uh…" he caught the look from Murdock and decided against his original idea of having Nancy do it since she was older, and he said, "Okay, we'll help you with it. Ah…get me the questions and then everybody sit down…over there," he pointed to the couch.

Violet brought Face her history book and the four girls parked themselves on the couch, and to make sure nobody tried to get away, B.A. and Murdock sat down on the arms of the couch alongside them.

Face read through the list of questions and murmured half to himself, "Okay…ah…oh, it's on the American Revolution…okay…ah…" addressing the group on the couch he asked, "Who was the King of Britain at the time of the Revolutionary War?"

"King George III," Daisy raised her hand.

"Ah…right," Face went to the next question, "How many people were killed in the Boston Massacre?"

"Five," Violet answered.

"Correct…who were the Minute Men soldiers?" Face asked.

Before the others could answer, Nancy raised her arm and said, "Handpicked elite forces for the colonists who were expected to be ready for battle at a moment's notice."

"No help from the peanut gallery," Daisy said as she punched her sister in the shoulder.

"Alright, moving on," Face said, "Ah…what brought about the need for the Declaration of Independence?"

Suddenly all the girls were quiet, they looked to one another to see if anybody could answer. One of them murmured something about 'can't define it, but I know it when I see it'. B.A. looked around the couch and noticed nobody was offering to answer, so, out of nowhere, he raised his hand. But Face didn't call him on it, and still nobody else spoke up, so B.A. raised both arms high above his head. Face was just about ready to bust out laughing but he managed to keep himself composed enough to say semi-seriously, "Go ahead, B.A."

The large, mean, scary Staff Sergeant answered, "Simply put, the colonists were being unfairly taxed by the English crown, without having any input about into the way they were being governed. Or as this is most commonly known, taxation without representation."

Face nodded mechanically and replied, "Thank you, B.A."

* * *

"It's impossible to find out how many families in this immediate area opt for homeschooling," Hannibal explained to his men when he returned later that night, after the women and children had gone to bed and they could speak somewhat freely, "For one thing a lot of these people don't talk to census takers so it doesn't go on record, for another the correspondent schools are scattered all over the country so even if you could pull their records to find out who in any vicinity is enrolled, you couldn't prove it by any one school because odds are they're using more than one, especially since we know there are different ones for high schools from elementary schools to junior high."

"Yeah but Hannibal, what's it all mean?" Face wanted to know.

"Well I did some checking around out of curiosity," Hannibal said, "Of course by the time I checked all newspaper offices were closed for the night, but I still managed to get hold of a few people willing to talk long enough to get some answers. For one thing, they further confirm what we already know that there is no law on the books that says a parent cannot teach their child at home, especially if said child is enrolled in a correspondent school. So, if there's going to be a record of these people being arrested, it'll have to be listed under some other charge: abuse, neglect, that sort of thing. So I did some checking…10 years ago it was estimated for every year that passed, two million children were abused nationwide and two thousand of them were beaten to death. Now, California's a big state but the fact remains we're only 1/50th of this country, which if we were talking strictly in numbers would come to 40,000 kids abused per state."

"But don't forget, Colonel," Murdock interjected, "Rhode Island is a very _small_ state, so somebody else has to take the excess that can't fit there."

"True, Murdock," Hannibal replied.

"And like you said, California's a big state, so perhaps what we've got here is a case of…80,000 90,000 cases per year? And there's roughly 450 cities in the state of California…"

"How do you know that, you crazy fool?" B.A. wanted to know.

Murdock looked to the Sergeant with a dumbfounded expression and said, "Beats me." He turned back to Hannibal and added, "So even if we had that 40,000 stately minimum, that would still come to roughly 88 cases of child abuse per city each year."

"Of course once again these are only the cases we _know_ about, most abuse is never discovered in time for any legal actions to be taken against the parents," Hannibal pointed out as he scratched his chin with one gloved finger, "All the same I ran the names of the people who did live in this building against the names in the latest arrest reports in the newspapers, like you said, Face, a roaring 20 cases of arrest for abuse or neglect officially stated on record."

"So it seems they already have over 1/4th of the city's entire yearly quota from one building alone," Face noted, and added cynically, "What're the odds of that?"

"In the last couple months," Hannibal said, "There have been about 15 other cases for the Los Angeles area…I checked them out, all of those were what seem to be legitimate cases where the children were bruised, battered, and to boot, not a single one of them was homeschooled."

"Uh huh," Face folded his arms against his chest, "So this is _not_ the epidemic Lorraine thinks it is."

"It is for this building but it doesn't seem to go any further," Hannibal stated.

"And the reason for that would be?" B.A. asked.

Hannibal parroted his earlier statement, "I have a theory, tomorrow we're going to go pay this Mr. Lance Borge a visit and see if he can tell us anything."

"What's the landlord going to know about this, Hannibal?" Murdock asked.

"Assuming he didn't play a part in this?" Face looked to Hannibal, "Is that the idea? That he reported them to get them out of his building?"

"That's _one_ possibility," Hannibal said, "But it's not the one I'm thinking."

"What is, then?" B.A. wanted to know.

Hannibal hesitated to answer and glanced around the room and said in a hushed voice, "Not here, the walls might have ears."

"Wouldn't it be better for them to find out the _real_ reason this is happening?" Face asked.

"Absolutely," Hannibal answered, "_Just_ as soon as we know what the _real_ reason is…until then I won't have them getting worked up about things that are only theory and possibility. Hysteria is the worst epidemic that can spread, and they've been put through enough of that already. As Lorraine said, this is a modern day witch hunt, the arrests are based on no evidence, they're being held in jail on amounts that exceed even flight risk cases. The way the legal system's congested, they could be sitting in there for weeks, or months, and then what? Is a lawyer going to conjure up allegations from anonymous sources who supposedly saw them commit actual acts of abuse? Or is there going to be some overzealous gas bag lawyer who decides to mark a milestone not only on the state law books, but in his own career, by publicly declaring that not sending your kids to public school or private school somehow causes actual and permanent _harm_ to children for which the parents deserve incarceration?" It was obvious that the Colonel was as lost on the whole thing as everybody else was. "What's the answer?"


End file.
